


From the Court of Gale and Iron

by Muccamukk



Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001), Books of the Raksura - Martha Wells
Genre: Alternate Universe - Books of the Raksura Fusion, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Captivity, Dysfunctional Family, Interspecies Romance, Kidnapping, M/M, Shapeshifters - Freeform, Slowish Burn Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 43,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25648996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: Nix is a high-born shapeshifter who should want for nothing, but family trouble drives him into danger and eventually to Fortress Currahee. Trapped in hostile territory, Nix knows that he can't let himself trust anyone, no matter how interesting a certain soldier turns out to be.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Comments: 52
Kudos: 65





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thank you to Fiorediloto for reading this over, offering advice and encouragement, and swatting the most egregious mistakes. And to everyone else who put up with me going on about this in the _actual year_ I've been working on it.
> 
>  **Continuity:**  
>  If you've read Martha Wells' The Books of the Raksura, this is set during the Time of Leaving, when many new courts spread out from the Reaches and inhabited new territory. This is probably readable without knowing Band of Brothers, but won't involve any of the gang from Indigo Cloud.
> 
> If you haven't read the Raksura books, they're set in a secondary world called the Three Worlds, which is populated by hundreds of different sentient peoples living in land, sea and air. The Raksura are a species who can shapeshift between a humanoid form and a lizard form (ones with wings are called Aeriat, wingless ones are called Arbora). It's a stratified matriarchal culture not unlike a honeybee hive.
> 
> Raksuran courts are ruled by winged fertile females called queens. Fertile males of the winged form are called consorts, and are prized for their beauty, their tact and diplomacy, and their ability to enhance bloodlines through carefully chosen matches with queens. Consorts often leave their birth court to join a new court on mating with a queen. Consorts are cosseted and mostly expected to be decorative, play politics behind scenes, and serve tea at diplomatic events.
> 
> Other roles in the court include warriors, hunters, teachers, mentors, et cetera. Aside from queen/consort pairings, monogamy is not expected (or even heard of), and people are assumed pansexual unless stated otherwise. Though the ruling queen has the final say, much of the decision making is done via consensus. If a court becomes too large, a queen and consort and their followers may leave to form a new court.
> 
> There's a wiki of terms (found [here](https://www.marthawells.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page)), but I'll try to explain everything else as I go.
> 
>  **Tl;dr:** Nix is a pretty, pretty shapeshifting dragon prince.
> 
> Also, you should read the books. They're great.

The second stupidest thing Nix had ever done was deliberately lose his warrior guard and go flying by himself. Not that it had been hard. He'd only been back at Gale Iron court for as long as it took to get yelled at by both his parents, and it didn't seem like that had been enough time for anyone to have worked out who was in charge of keeping their disgraced consort out of trouble this time around.

All Nix had had to do was climb out through the breeze way like he and his clutchmates Blanche and Hair had used to do, make sure no one was looking, and take off from the clifftop right towards the sun. He hadn't gotten to fly free like this in many turns of the world, not since he'd left his birth court of Gale Iron for Star Aster and what was meant to have been the start of his new life.

Nix kept flying up, facing the noontide sun and letting it temporarily blind him. The less he thought about Star Aster and his one-time queen, the better. Nix flew until his shoulders ached—sooner than they should have, he was out of practice. His queen, Carnelian, had wanted to keep him close, was afraid that he would get hurt, or get into trouble, or maybe just manage to have fun. Nix was pretty sure no one at Star Aster had known what fun was.

The ache in his back and shoulders and the sun in his eyes couldn't seem to make Nix forget what Star Aster's ruling queen had said when she'd told Nix that her daughter didn't want him any more, that he wasn't good enough. It was a theme Nix's father, Hope, had picked up on with gusto on his return, and hadn't let rest since Star Aster's warrior escort had disappeared from earshot. Hope had told Nix exactly whose fault it was that he'd been sent back to his birth court in disgrace, something that had never happened in the recorded history of their bloodline, something that had brought shame to the entire court, and possibly doomed Blanche's chances of ever getting a consort.

Certainly, Hope had said, spines bristling with paternal interest he'd rarely shown before, no other court would ever so much as look at Nix. It would be the consort bowers of his birth court for the rest of Nix's life: no queen, no clutches, no way out. Hope had looked close to satisfied when he'd said it, like he'd taken pleasure in Nix's failure, despite how it reflected on Gale Iron and therefore himself as Gale Iron's first consort and Nix's father.

That'd been when Nix had taken off out of the bowers, saying he was going to go find Blanche, but not even looking for her.

The worst part of it was that his father was right. It was Nix's fault, and Nix was useless to his court as a consort. The entire bloodline might well be suspect because of him, and Nix was going to have to live in the same bower with someone who was never, ever going to let him forget it.

Maybe Nix could move in with the warriors. His other surviving clutchmate, Hair, would certainly let Nix share his bower, when Grain wasn't in it anyway. Maybe the Arbora would take pity on him where the Aeriat wouldn't. The teachers had been hovering at the edges of Nix's big opening spat with his mother, Diamond. They'd probably coo over their fallen consort for at least a couple days, sneaking him treats and petting him like they had when he was a fledgling.

The notion had a certain appeal. Nix spread his wings wide and banked towards the east. Looking down, he couldn't believe how far he'd gone from the court. He was well away from the escapement Gale Iron was tunnelled into, past the rolling hills that butted up against it, and out into the savannah below. Turning further, he could see the outline of his court as a purple smudge on the horizon.

Nix sighed and ruffled his spines against the wind. He was going to have to fly all the way back there, and come home a tired mess, only to have to face everyone throwing a fit that he'd gone out alone. Or maybe they wouldn't be. Nix wasn't sure anyone back at the court gave a single shit what happened to him, only consort in the ruling queen's only clutch or not. Besides, Nix was hungry, and his wings ached. He wouldn't mind a nice fat grasseater right now. Maybe he could catch two, eat one, and bring the other back for the hunters.

That wasn't a bad idea, now that Nix thought of it. Once he got back into shape, he'd be able to fly faster and father than the warriors, way out into the savannah. Maybe there'd be some use for him in the court after all, one that would keep him out of the bowers for days at a time. Nix hadn't hunted in turns, but he'd used to go with Blanche and Hair when they were fledglings.

He wheeled in a full circle and studied the ground below him. There was a herd of those little hoppers away to the south. Nix had never had much luck with the things. They always seemed to slip and twist away from his claws, splashing out of his clutch like water. To the west, though, the ground dipped, and Nix vaguely remembered there been a riverbed that had deep pools even now in the dry season. There would be lots of things to eat there. Nix turned and dropped as he approached the river. Yes, there was a fat little hoofed beast right next to the water.

He narrowed his eyes, seeing a collar around its neck and a trailing rope. It must have belonged to a groundling herder. Oh well, they'd let it get away, and it was Nix's now. He was going to eat every last bit of it, and then he was going to find another one to take back to the hunters.

Nix dropped towards the grasseater, only cupping his wings at the last moment, reaching his claws for its neck. The thing heard his wings and tried to turn to look up at him and to run away at the same time, bleating frantically. A heartbeat later, Nix was on top of it, teeth about to sever its spine.

Pain lanced through Nix's wing, tearing the membrane just above his shoulder. He dropped the grasseater and whipped around to see what'd hit him. He had an arrow, a groundling hunting arrow, sticking out of the bone of his wing. He kept turning, trying to find the archer, but he was too slow. Another arrow caught him in the chest. His scales blunted the hit, but it still sunk in past the head. Nix screamed in fury as much as in pain.

Catching movement out of the corner of his eye, Nix leaped towards the muddy bank, fully planning to disembowel whatever he caught there. His chest and wing burned with a pain that seemed to spread and intensify with every heartbeat, but Nix pressed forward. He couldn't die like this, falling for some groundling trap when no one at Gale Iron knew where he was. It was too stupid.

Nix's hind leg slipped in the mud, not getting the traction he wanted. He pushed himself upright and tried again, but his limbs weren't doing what he told them too. Nix snarled and bared his teeth, promising himself that he'd at least take a solid bite out of whoever was doing this to him. Whoever, he realised now, had poisoned those arrows.

Problem was, Nix couldn't keep his head up any more either. He dropped to his belly on the mud and tried to see through the blurring movement all around him. The world was spinning, but he thought he saw a tall, light-skinned groundling in mud-coloured clothes. He had a bow loose in his hands, not drawn because it didn't need to be. Nix was already done.

It was too stupid, Nix thought again, which meant it was just about the perfect way for him to die.

* * *

Nix's head hurt. He felt like he'd been up for four days straight and then gotten into those mushrooms that the younger consorts in Star Aster kept raving about. He opened his mouth to tell Shadow and Ebony that he was absolutely never ever again going to do anything they thought was a good idea—in fact he was going to do the opposite—but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He was sleeping in his winged Aeriat form, which wasn't usual for him, and on a hard surface, which had gotten depressingly common. The Arbora at Star Aster had stopped putting Nix to bed towards the end there, just before the ruling queen had finally sent him packing, when everyone had gotten tired of him—though not as tired as Nix had gotten of himself.

Cracking one eye open, Nix tried to work out where he was. It was dark. Darker than any bower in Star Aster. Nix tried to think how he could have gotten down to the larder levels, but that wasn't right either. He could hear creaking, and wind pushing against something. They were moving. The air smelled of the savannah, dead wood, iron, linen, and groundlings. Nausea overwhelmed Nix, and he clamped his eyes shut again.

"Captain, it's waking up." That voice was firstly too loud, secondly speaking in Altanic, not Raksuran.

Nix swallowed past the dryness in his throat and tried to ask what the shit was going on, but couldn't make more than an inarticulate growl. He was not nearly awake enough to speak a second language, let alone a third.

He heard booted feet on wood. The smell of groundling grew stronger. A rough hand grabbed a handful of Nix's frills and yanked his head up. Nix's jewelled collar must have caught on something because the motion half choked him.

Nix blinked again, pushing back the pain to focus on the face in front of him. He recognised it. It was the man with the bow.

Nix bared his teeth and snarled, snapping forward at the groundling's exposed stomach. He came up short and hard, pain tearing through his neck as the collar, which was not the jewelled consort gift Carnelian had given him, but something iron and bound to the floor right under him, crushed down on his frills and spines, and bit into the back of his neck. He was collared and chained to the floor. Nix tried to turn his head and bite the groundling's arm instead, but he wasn't fast enough. The groundling dropped Nix's head and stepped away, making Nix flop back on the deck with a thud. He tried again to surge up, but his ankles and wrists were chained too, and he couldn't move past a low crouch.

"Feisty thing, isn't it, sir?" the first groundling said from somewhere behind Nix. He wanted to see if he could crane his head to look around, but didn't want to look away from the one in front of him. "You sure you want to haul it all the way back to Currahee?"

"The general will like it," the groundling who'd been holding Nix said. "I'll bet he's never seen one of these before. I haven't seen one 'cept from a distance. Someone north west of here keeps them as pets, maybe." He nudged Nix's hand with the toe of his boot, but pulled back again before Nix could sink his claws in.

"Someone rich," the other said. "That collar was something else. Wait'll the general sees it."

The groundling in charge turned sharply, stomping out of Nix's field of view. "The general's not going to hear about the collar," he snapped.

Nix tensed, bracing to hear a blow, but he didn't.

"Okay, Captain. Whatever you say. I sure didn't see a collar."

"That's right," Captain growled. "Keep it up."

Nix shuffled backward into the chains enough to turn his head. The other groundling had the same dark hair and light skin, but wasn't nearly so tall. He was sitting on a wooden box and kicking his heels. The entire room was made out of wood fitted together, lit by a lamp burning oil. Nix could feel that they were moving, south and east and a little slower than a warrior could fly. Moving without being able to see the horizon made the nausea return. If he closed his eyes, Nix could pretend he was being carried, somehow.

They were high and in the wind. Nix pictured the house built on a floating island, but he'd never seen one move this fast.

His head still ached, and he was worried about his wing, which he couldn't see well from this position, but which throbbed with pain with every heartbeat. He couldn't think straight, and he wasn't in any position to try to talk his way out or to fight free. Groaning, Nix laid his head on the floor and tried to fall into a healing sleep.

* * *

Nix came to later, near dawn the next day, his internal clock told him. Sleep hadn't come especially deeply, and he didn't think his chest or wing felt any better, but his head had cleared a little. The room was dark, and Nix couldn't hear any sounds other than the creak of wood and the sound of wind. He remembered reading about sealings that had craft made of wood with tree trunks and cloth attached to them to let the winds push them about. Nix had also read that the sea smelled of salt, and he didn't smell water at all, just wood and air. Was he on a sky craft of some sort? He'd never heard of such a thing, but he'd never read especially widely either. The mentors would know.

Would he ever see the mentors or any of the Arbora again? Nix wished that he knew where they were going, south east still, and fast. Someone at Gale Iron must have worked out that Nix was no longer in the court by now, but Nix had no idea what kind of stir that might turn up. Hope would probably assume that Nix was off sulking, or had found some hallucinogenic mushrooms and was sleeping it off. Would Diamond order a search, or let Nix come back in on his own?

Captain had liked Nix's collar and had taken it. Perhaps he'd be willing to ransom Nix for more jewellery. Nix could only assume that if these groundlings knew that Nix wasn't a stray pet but belonged to a ruling queen's royal clutch they'd be trying to talk to him already, not just leaving him chained to the floor with no food or water.

When Captain found out what Nix was, how much would he ask Gale Iron for in exchange for their lost consort? How much would Diamond be willing to pay? The idea of his mother and this man _bartering_ over what Nix was worth to them made his gut roil with anger and shame. He'd been sent packing by Star Aster, and if Hope was right would not be courted again. What sort of value could a tiny court like Gale Iron place on a consort no queen would want? When it came down to it, Nix wasn't sure that his mother would give so much as a grasseater's tooth to see him returned. He was sure, however, that he didn't want to find out if she would or not.

No, Nix was going to break loose on his own. He tried to flex his wing, but the bolt of pain down to his shoulder made him freeze and settle down again. He could shift to his groundling form and slide out of the chains on his wrists and ankles, which would let him undo the collar and escape this room. The problem was that after that—even if shifting injured didn't transfer worse wounds to his softer, weaker body—Nix would have to fight past an unknown number of armed groundlings, leap off the floating island, and fly out of range of their poisoned arrows before they could shoot him out of the sky, all with a bad wing and an arrow wound to the chest. Nix had never been much for spending time with the soldiers, but even he could see the potential for every part of that plan to go farcically wrong.

Instead of making a break for it, Nix needed to be smart about this and play a longer game. If he let them think he was a dumb beast, one with a much larger body than he needed to have, he could let his wing heal and wait for a chance to break loose or slip away. From there, he could simply backtrack the way they'd come, until he either found Gale Iron or some other place he recognised. His family would worry about him, but they wouldn't need to pay a ransom, and Nix wouldn't need to find out how much—or how little—he was worth to them.

Some time later, the second groundling came in with a clay dish of water, which he put on the floor just out of Nix's reach and then nudged forward with his boot. "There ya go, boy," he said, and Nix fantasised about shifting quickly back and forth and tearing the groundling's throat out with his teeth.

He felt raw and achy from dehydration, so Nix gulped down the water until it was gone, then realised that it was drugged and passed out again.

If his mother paid a grasseater's tooth for Nix, it'd be too much of a cost to the court.

When Nix woke up again, the groundlings had bandaged his chest and wing, packing something against the wounds that cut the pain. Nix twisted and turned to try to see what they'd done, but he couldn't make it out in the dimness of the room. There was another dish of water in front of Nix, and he sniffed at it cautiously. If it was drugged, he couldn't smell it, and didn't know how he would be able to tell without trying it. He swallowed down a couple mouthfuls and, when that seemed fine, finished the bowl.

He hadn't seen much of his captors since the first day. It was like they had something better to do than watch him, Nix thought. Well, he would show them the cost of underestimating him, just as soon as his wing felt strong enough to fly.

* * *

The next two days passed in the same slow manner. Nix lay chained to the floor, trying to sleep away the boredom and pain. He saw next to nothing of Captain, and only saw the other groundling at feeding time, offering water and raw meat. Periodically, they'd drug him, tend to his wounds and swab out the room.

Hour by hour, Nix felt his weariness and disgust grow. Raksura were meant to shift freely, and staying in his Aeriat form was starting to wear on Nix, but not nearly as much as his treatment was. But when he flexed his wing, he knew that he couldn't yet risk and escape. It didn't matter how humiliating it felt to be treated as a mindless predator. It would feel worse to be a hostage.

At last, around noon on what Nix thought was the fourth day since his capture, the flying island slowed, then stopped. The wood around Nix creaked and shuddered, then thumped as though struck, and Nix heard many booted feet running above him. He stayed as still as he could, watching, hoping for an obvious way out, even though he still didn't trust his wing to carry him.

Finally, Captain came down, his dark hair gleaming with perspiration and his face tight with annoyance. More groundlings followed him, more than Nix had seen so far, and carrying more chains.

"Careful," Captain said, "it bites."

Nix thought about snarling at them, just for the satisfaction of watching them flinch back, but dug his claws into the wooden floor and braced himself for a fight. They wouldn't trick him with drugs this time, he promised himself.

It turned out that they didn't have to. It didn't take them long to hammer together a solid wooden frame around him and transfer his chains from the blots in the floor to new bolts in the frame. While they were doing this, more groundlings—how many could there possibly be?—were lifting off the planking that made the ceiling above Nix. With each board they lifted away, more daylight streamed in, striking Nix's face for the first time in days. He flinched away from it, trying to cover his eyes, but of course his arms were tied down more securely than ever. He flattened his spines in humiliation and did his best to hide his face.

Thick ropes were tied to the corners of the frame, and strung up above him. Nix wanted to look at them to see how they worked, but didn't want to look like he was looking. He tried reaching for one to see if he could gnaw through it, but only iron chains were within reach.

Captain laughed and called out to the others, some Altanic phrase Nix didn't understand, but that made the groundlings start to chant.

When the ropes took up the tension, and Nix realised that he was about to be hoisted frame and all like the hunters lifting a dressed carcass up the cliff. He tried sinking his claws deeper into the wooden floor to hold himself there. He didn't have the leverage; his grip held for a second, then with a great heave the groundlings yanked him free, leaving a claw embedded in the deck and a trail of blood behind him. Nix grunted against the pain, and tried to balance himself on the wooden frame surrounding him. He could hold on with his arms or with his hind claws, but not both, making the rest of his body dangle and sway.

The motion made his stomach roll, and he closed his eyes for a second as they hoisted him out of the room and into the open air.

They weren't on a flying island, but on some kind of wooden house about fifty paces long and ten wide, pointed at both ends to cut the wind, with a rail along its flat top. Long wooden beams rose into the air above him, one of them bracing the pulleys for the winch. Nix didn't understand how any of this stayed in the air, but the groundlings must have some kind of magic.

Besides which, it was no longer in the air, exactly. As Nix rose higher, he could see over the rail to to the land below him. Much like Gale Iron, the groundlings' home was built into the side of an escapement overlooking the grasslands below. But where the Raksuran colony had taken over a honeycomb of caves cut into the rock, this place was built out of massive blocks of stone built on top of the formation. The flying house was tied down to the top edge of one of the walls, each of which was two or three paces thick, one of the rows of fortification that surrounded a collection of wooden and stone buildings. The complex followed the line of the ridge until it curved out of view, and more flying houses were tied off to the walls, with groundlings coming and going from them. If there was a road up to their colony, Nix couldn't see it, but the hills bellow were terraced for cultivation.

The frame jolted and swung out towards the fortress. For a moment Nix stared down at nothing but stone wall and the precipice below. If the rope parted, he and the frame would plummet and smash on the cliff face. He wouldn't have time to shift.

Nix closed his eyes again and this time kept them closed until he felt the frame touch down onto stone. He was inside the wall now, with the heavy stone towering above him on all sides. The groundlings had planted a garden, some small trees, some flowering shrubs, all divided into squares, and the squares separated by metal bars.

It took Nix far too long to work out that they were cages, and he was being put into one of them. They'd pulled the roof off, but he could see where it would all slot back together. They were giving him maybe three times his length to turn around in, no enclosure out of view, no cover from the elements other than the wall of the castle behind him and a scruffy little pine tree. More importantly, the bars were too close together for his grounding form to squeeze through. He would be trapped no matter what they did.

When the ropes were untied, the groundlings started a complicated process of chaining him to the ground so that they could remove the frame. Nix watched wearily, but without much hope. They moved with practised ease, careful to stay out of his reach, chattering amongst themselves about dinner, how long they'd been away from the fortress, and who they wanted to have sex with. They spoke Altanic in a variety of accents, as though it weren't everyone's first language. He wished he'd listened more to the mentors about what kind of people lived around here, but the truth was Gale Iron was still new enough to not have met all its more distant neighbours. Nix was going to have to find out on his own who these people were and what they planned to do with him.

At last the only chain left was the one tied to his collar, strung through a great bolt on the ground and pulled tight so that his head couldn't move at all. When the last groundling cleared the cage, they let the chain go. Now, Nix could, if he wished, move around his cage, but it would mean trailing the clanking chain behind him. With its end bolted down outside the cage, they could drag him back to the loop any time they wished, and Nix would have to live in a circle around it. Even if he shifted, he wasn't sure he could get the collar over his head, but in his groundling form, his hands might be agile enough to unfasten it. Then he'd be trapped inside the cage with the collar off, and his captors would know something was going on.

Not that there could be much going on in here. He wanted to go to the back wall and curl into the smallest ball he could and stay there until... well, the problem was he didn't know until what. Nix wouldn't be rescued, wouldn't be traded, and couldn't slip out through the bars. If he wanted to get out of this place, he was going to have to think of something else.

The groundlings wandered away, leaving only Captain from the flying house standing with his arms folded, watching to see how Nix reacted to his new cage.

Nix ignored him, looking around to see what might be in the other cages. The courtyard was a few hundred paces across, and divided up into a variety of spaces with walkways between them. He didn't see anything he recognised as a person in any of the cages, certainly not any other Raksura. The cage on Nix's right had a flock of bright green birds with sharp teeth and big yellow eyes. They hissed and chattered to each other, but Nix didn't think they had any language. To his left was a cage about the same size as his that lay empty. Double sets of scratches scored the wall at the back—made by some kind of predator? It had paws the size of Nix's hands if so. He wondered what had happened to it. Had it died of captivity? Been killed for sport? Starved?

How long would Nix last in a place like this?

He watched the birds until he heard more groundlings approaching. Captain stood straighter when he heard them and raised his hand to his forehead in greeting. The leader of the approaching man replied in kind a moment later, like a queen flicking her spines to acknowledge a warrior. Nix pretended to ignore the newcomer but watched him out of the corner of his eyes. He was shorter and broader across the chest than Captain, and with lighter hair. Gold gleamed at his throat and on his shoulders, but otherwise he wore the same dun-coloured loose garments as the rest of the groundlings Nix had seen. If the Raksura ever formed a trade relation with these people, they could make a good deal teaching them about dying cloth.

"General," Captain said, dropping his hand and falling into a more relaxed posture.

"Captain Speirs," General replied. "I hear you've brought me something."

"Yes, sir." Captain stepped aside and gestured at Nix's cage. "We caught it four days out into the grasslands. Some kind of predator, but nothing I've ever seen before."

Nix pretended indifference as General walked to his cage, but noticed he didn't get within an arm's length of the bars. His entourage gathered around Captain, all lean young groundlings who looked strung taut and ready for violence. They all seemed roughly the same type of person, with light skin and fine noses, no scales or feathers that Nix could see. He wasn't sure of their gender, or of how one might tell.

"Very fine," General said. Even without looking, Nix could feel General looking him over as if he were a grasseater he was about to butcher. "I've never seen the like of it. Remarkable colour. Look at the brown shimmer under the black, right along the edges of the scales. When the war's over, we'll have to build a bigger cage for it, show it off properly."

"Sir," one of his entourage said, but Nix didn't think General was listening.

"I wish we had the philosophers to spare to study this one," he said. "Perhaps we could domesticate them as a flying mount. That would be something, wouldn't it, Speirs? Faster than a wind-ship."

Speirs—which seemed to be his name, was Captain a title?—snorted. "It'd take some work, sir," he said. "It tried to bite every chance it got."

And with a regrettable lack of luck, Nix thought. He'd laid eyes on General two minutes ago, and he already wanted to bite his face off. Maybe he'd play nice and let them ride him until he got the chance. He couldn't quite suppress a shiver that ran all the way down his spines at the thought of letting someone do that to him. It seemed that being rejected by his queen and sent home hadn't been humiliation enough.

"It's injured," General noted.

"Unavoidable, sir," Speirs said quickly. "Healing well, though."

General hummed in disapproval, but moved onto the next cage, studying the green birds. Nix curled his tail over his nose and pretended to sleep.

Fatigue, pain, and the lingering press of fear all weighed him down, and he almost did sleep, or at least drift off, until the thud of boots and commotion of raised voices roused him. Nix flicked his tail aside enough to watch a new groundling enter.

Unlike any of the others, he wore black paint on his face, and his clothes were ripped and soiled. Nix could smell the tang of blood in the air, but couldn't tell if the groundling was injured or not.

He raised his hand like Speirs had, and without waiting to be addressed snapped, "Sir, my company's getting beat to hell out there. We need reinforcements, or we won't be able to hold the river."

"Now, see here, Captain Winters—" General started, and Nix could see the new groundling's eyes darting around for aid and finding none, though Speirs at least looked interested.

" _Sir_ ," Winters almost yelled before taking a breath to steady himself and straightening until he stood like a young tree. "General, sir, I must request reinforcements for the river. Most urgently."

General sighed. He looked longingly at the cage of birds, before giving in to necessity. "Very well, Captain," he said wearily. "Speirs, are your men ready?"

Spears mouth turned down, and he demurred, but Nix could tell he was already doing a tally.

"A company would make the difference," Winters said stoutly. He shifted his weight, and Nix realised that it was indeed the groundling's blood; it oozed out through his boot, but Winters was trying hard to ignore it. The fight—the fate of his people—mattered more to him than his own pain. He was acting like a warrior, or like a queen.

"Speirs," General said, dismissing both of them with a tilt of his head.

Winters limped out and Speirs followed, their heads together. As they departed, General sighed again, and his escort buzzed with whispered conversation, but no one else left, and soon the General turned to the cage beside the birds, inspecting a hopper Nix could smell but not see.

Nix wondered how far the river was and who these groundlings were fighting there. Were they conquering new territory or defending their own? What would happen if they were overrun? This fortress seemed to Nix like a sound place, built for defence and hard to take, but maybe they were fighting skylings, or groundlings with... had they been called wind-ships?

They probably weren't fighting the Fell, the Raksura's cannibalistic cousin species, on grounds that if they were, it would have been a very short war, and everyone in the castle would have been lunch by now. Raksura were put on the Three Worlds to fight the Fell, if only because they were the only things capable of slowing them down.

But even fighting other groundlings, what would happen to Nix if the place were taken? Would the invaders want to keep General's pets, or might they let them go? Or eat them?

Nix shivered and curled into a ball. The movement made his chest ache, reminding him that even if he could slide through the bars, he still wasn't in fit shape to fly long distances. For now, all he could do was stay where he was, heal, and hope that the less hungry side won the fight.


	2. Chapter Two

Around sunset, a groundling made a circuit through the garden, dropping food in each cage. Nix got a pile of meat scraps, obviously the least choice bits that the actual people didn't want.

Nix eyed his pile of offal and considered refusal. He could probably get away with that for a day or two without facing starvation. It would also likely mean living with the stink of it as it decayed, but what was that? He'd have to live with his own stink anyway. He had to live with the stink of the whole menagerie, made worse because his senses were sharper in his winged Aeriat form than when he was a groundling.

In the cage next to him, the birds descended on the leg bone they'd been tossed, screeching and snapping at each other as they lifted in the air between them. Each set upon it with their tiny sharp teeth, and in minutes had eaten the bone through to marrow and sucked that up as well.

Stomach turning, Nix curled his lips back to keep from throwing up. The truth was, if he wanted to heal, he had to eat, and this was the probably only food he was going to get. He could wish for thinly sliced loin muscles, stewed grain, or honeyed nuts, or those little root vegetable cakes the Arbora always had as much as he liked, all that and a cup of tea too. It wouldn't get him out of his cage.

Nix closed his eyes and devoured the slimy meat as fast as he could—forcing himself to ignore the taste, trying to imagine he was hunting with Blanche when they were still little more than fledglings—then drank the tepid water and slept.

The trouble with sleeping, it turned out, was that he really only could do it for so long. Nix woke around midnight, his wing and chest aching. He stretched carefully trying to work the cramps out of his muscles without straining his injuries. It had been a long time since he'd spent more than one night outside of the padded nest of a consort's bower. Even the warriors escorting him home from Star Aster had brought blankets for him to sleep in. He'd been the firstborn consort of the third generation since Gale and Iron had founded the court. Wanting for something, at least a physical something, wasn't a feeling Nix knew well. Wanting intangible things, that he knew rather better.

Nix looked around. Most of the other caged creatures had bedded down for the night. The birds next to him sat in a row with their heads tucked under their wings, save for the ones on the ends, who each had one eye open, watching out for the flock.

Across the courtyard, something howled, a high yipping sound that paused and waited for an answer but received none. It made Nix think of the way someone back home would start to sing, one of the Arbora usually, and voice after voice would join in until the entire court swelled with a hundred notes joined in one song. The fledglings would chirp along, or mouth the words if they were too shy to join yet. They'd all heard these songs from birth, and the mentors would sing them after they died.

Would Nix ever hear them again? The idea that he wouldn't make his chest ache in a way an arrow couldn't approach.

The creature yipped again, its thin voice echoing off the stone walls until it almost sounded as though it had a companion. Perhaps that was enough for it, because it fell silent after that. Nix wanted to reply, or even to sing, though that was too dangerous. The songs were complicated, repetitive and melodic, and couldn't be mistaken for an animal's. Besides, singing with no answer as the creature just had would only be more depressing than not singing at all.

The moon had risen over the ramparts, pale and waning, but bright enough to cast the shadows of the bars like claw marks across the ground. Nix didn't see any groundlings around, and figured now might be a chance to see if this place really was designed to keep shapeshifters in.

The door itself was locked, and Nix couldn't work out the mechanism, so he turned his attention to the roof of the cage.

Careful not to strain his wing, Nix followed the vertical bars up with his hands, testing each one. None of them budge a hair's breadth, though the door rattled a little. He scrambled up the bars until he was hanging upside down from the top of the cage. The chain from his collar rattled and hung straight down as he threw his weight downward. The bars creaked above him, but didn't bend. All the joins where the top of the cage could be removed were bolted tight and would need some kind of tool to get them open again. Studying the back wall, he found that instead of being drilled into the rock, the bars simply ended, resting against the back frame. He thought that could be a weak point, and one the groundlings might not notice. If he could make a gap between the bars and the frame or the frame and the stone wall, perhaps his shifted form could wriggle out unseen. From there he could take his winged form again and fly home. So long as there weren't warriors on the walls with more poisoned arrows.

Hanging upside down was starting to make his chest hurt and his breathing shallow. Nix dropped back to the ground and curled up again. If he could space out investigating the cage and observing the groundlings with naps, perhaps time would pass more quickly.

It didn't. Not really. Nix dozed off and on until morning. At least the sun came in over the far wall and cast some pools of light for Nix to lounge in. It reminded him too much of sunbathing with Carnelian when they'd first mated. They'd used to go up on the cliff tops above Star Aster, just the two of them. Or before that, on a ledge in front of Gale Iron with Blanche and their warrior clutchmate Hair. Nix had first learned to fly when Hope had pushed him off the ledge. He'd shifted about half way down, and the rest had been pure instinct, too bad the landing hadn't gone so well.

General came by while Nix was still dozing in the sun. He stopped at the cage door, his shadow falling onto Nix's outstretched wing. Nix half opened a single eye then closed it again. General only had two groundlings in his retinue that morning, but they both carried bows across their backs and blades at their hips. Nix wondered if General's life was in danger, or if he just liked the feeling of having an entourage—like a queen with her favourite warriors.

As General studied Nix, and Nix pretended to sleep, a groundling with dragging steps entered the courtyard.

It was the agitated one from the night before, now limping so badly he walked with a short stick to prop himself up. His face and clothes were clean, and he wore a cap of the same drab material that didn't quite cover his copper-coloured hair. "You wanted to see me, General?" Winters said after they'd raised their hands to each other.

General nodded. "How's the leg, Captain?"

Winters grimaced and shook his head slightly. "I'm to stay off the line for at least a week, sir."

"Speirs is taking over your company." It wasn't a question but the confirmation of an order, like General wanted to make sure that Winters couldn't say he didn't know.

"As long as they're still holding the river, sir," Winters acknowledged. He was still standing stiff as a reed frozen by the first frost. If it hurt, no sign of it showed on his lean face.

"You'll hold it." That said with a finality that allowed no other option, save a threat. "You know this is the last fight they have in them. Let them break themselves over us, then we'll see."

Nix opened his other eye to see if it looked like Winters believed that, but he couldn't tell. He held his expression as still as his body. "Sir," was all he said.

"Meanwhile, you're to stay in Currahee and mind that leg of yours." General clapped Winters on the shoulder hard enough to rock him sideways. Winters’ jaw twitched. "Those boys of yours need you back in the fight, son!"

"Yes, sir."

"Why don't you stay and enjoy the menagerie? Being here, looking at the animals, why, I find it gives a soul rest. Don't you?"

Winters shifted his weight, bracing more firmly on his stick. He started to nod, but stopped himself. He looked around the courtyard as though he'd never really considered the place before, then he looked at Nix. For a moment, their eyes met. Winters' were a pale blue-grey surrounded by flame-red lashes. He held Nix's gaze for a moment, and Nix's heart nearly stopped as the fear that this groundling _knew_ , but then Winters looked at General. "Permission to speak, sir?"

Nix blinked. Hadn't they already been speaking? But General's eyes flicked up and down Winters, and he considered the question before answering in the affirmative.

"Why, uh, why do you keep these animals, sir?" Winters asked. "We can't eat most of them, and they've never helped in the fight."

General looked at Winters, like a queen forcing one of her warriors to shift to groundling form in submission, but Winters neither shifted nor backed down. General pursed his lips and made a soft sound with his tongue against his teeth. "Look at this creature," he said, instead of answering Winters directly. He gestured at Nix, and they both turned to stare at him. Nix had to suppress the urge to flick his spines forward aggressively. "It's beautiful, isn't it? The way there's a nut-brown sheen under the black of its scales. Matches its eyes, or just about. We're staring at it, and it's staring back up at us, almost like it's a person. Ever seen anything like it, Captain?"

"No, sir. I haven't," Winters said, and there was enough sincerity in his voice that Nix almost wanted to preen under his admiration.

"You've been in the whole time, haven't you, son? Four turns, the hinterlands razed, thousands dead, and not just boys fighting but families too, but now it looks like it finally might be over. What do you think will happen then?"

Winters shook his head, looking at General gape mouthed for a moment, then summoned a proper, "I don't know, sir."

"I don't either, son," General said, and for once the patronising bluster dropped from his voice, "but I think, whatever it is, we're going to need something beautiful."

"Yes, sir," Winters said, and Nix didn't think he sounded convinced.

"Now!" General said, the suddenness of his mood shift startling both Winters and the cage full of birds. "I have work to do, and you need to rest up, Captain."

"Sir."

When General and his men left, Winters lingered. He leaned back against the empty cage beside Nix's and stared at him pensively. Nix felt his scales itch under the intensity of the look and folded his neck down and his wings up to cover his head.

He hadn't liked being stared at before, not after all the covert looks and whispers in Star Aster—the quickly averted glances, the pity when people did look at him. And now he was positively adverse to attention, at least when he wasn't trying to get it on his own terms.

Nix bunched up his muscles, braced against the floor, and launched himself at the corner of the cage. He grabbed onto the bars and hissed, his spines and frills flaring forward, his wings up to make himself look twice his size. The chain rattled and clanked. Nix deepened the cry into a feral scream.

Winters flinched back half a step, tried to brace on his bad leg, and sprawled backward onto the gravel path. Nix expected him to scramble right back up again, but he didn't. Instead, Winters slumped back until he lay flat on his back, head tipped to look between the cages to the sky. Then he didn't move. His chest rose and fell shallowly, and his hands clenched his walking stick, so Nix was pretty sure he wasn't dead. Nix lowered his frills and dropped back to the cage floor with a clank.

When Winters still didn't move, Nix turned to follow his gaze, thinking he'd see a wind-ship or something in that line. He didn't, just blue sky without even a cloud for interest.

All he could see was freedom.

Nix moaned, and Winters pushed himself up on his elbows and looked at him again, not speculatively as he had before, or through him to something else, but really _at_ him. Nix lay back down and spread his wings in the sun, pretending to ignore Winters.

"You want to fly, don't you, big guy?" Winters said. He pushed himself back to his feet, grunting in pain and effort until he got the stick under him and his weight braced. He paused for a moment more, then said, almost too softly to hear, "So do I."

As he limped off out of the courtyard, Nix wondered what he meant by that.

* * *

The next round of food was drugged, and Nix woke up with his bandages changed and Winters sitting on a wicker chair outside of the cage. His bad leg was propped on a wooden box, and he was talking to the groundling who brought the food. "Think it'll be able to fly again?" he asked.

The food bringer shrugged. "Probably. It's healing clean, sir." Unlike in Raksuran, the pronoun for a body part and a whole object was the same, and Nix didn't know if the groundling meant his wing or himself generally. Nix twitched his tail in irritation, then hoped they couldn't tell it was a response. The groundling asked Winters, "Sir, do you think we can train it to ride, like General Taylor wants?"

Winters laughed. "No, ma'am, I do not."

Nix realised he'd guessed wrong on the gender, and looked the groundling up and down again. They really all did look the same. Though, he supposed this one had smoother skin and a rounder face. He hated that he was going to get to know these people well enough to care about details like that, then felt angry at himself for not figuring it out earlier. He might well need every scrap of information he could gather to get out of here.

"Looks pretty docile to me," the food-bringer said.

"Yeah, it does, doesn't it?" Winters replied, and Nix didn't have to look up to see the way he was smiling slightly. He waited for Winters to tell her about his earlier lunge, but he kept his peace. When the food-bringer and, presumably, vet left, Winters picked up a little brick of leather and pages and held it open, eyes scanning left to right.

It was different from the scrolls the mentors had at home, but Nix thought he remembered groundling traders with reading bricks before, but he didn't recall what they'd been called. He'd really never interacted with the traders. The drugs still pulled at his mind, making him feel sluggish and stupid. Not that he needed help on that.

The reading brick looked expensive, and Nix wondered if it was from a common store in the fortress, or was somehow connected to Winters. He wasn't sure how these groundlings shared possessions. He was only becoming aware of how little he knew about them. He could speak Altanic, but not read any of the scripts, and suddenly Nix wished that Winters would decide to read aloud. If nothing else, it would ease the eternal boredom of lying here with nothing to do and not even enough room to properly pace.

The sun had moved behind the walls, cooling the courtyard, and Nix wished he could fly up to the ramparts to catch the afternoon heat. He folded his wings in tightly to stay warm. It did feel better with the new bandages. He'd be able to fly soon, he thought, at least for a little way.

If he could get out of here, Nix could hide out in the cliffs until he was completely healed, and then make his way home to Gale Iron from there. He wondered if he'd run into a search party. The court must have missed him by now. It had been six days. They must be looking. Even if he was worthless for almost everything at court and no queen would want him, Nix still belonged to the ruling queen's first clutch. They would care about that if nothing else, wouldn't they? He hadn't even talked to his clutchmates in turns. Blanche had flown out to Star Aster once, but her welcome had been so chilly she hadn't returned, and Nix hadn't spoken to Hair since the delegation had brought him to Star Aster. Nix thought about the haranguing he'd gotten from his father and shivered.

"You cold?" Winters asked. He sounded genuinely concerned. He set the reading brick down on his good leg and leaned forward. "You don't have anything in there to sleep on, huh?"

Nix wanted to snort in answer, but kept quiet.

"I'll see if I can get you some straw, maybe a blanket," Winters said, and Nix couldn't help ruffling his spines in reply. He shouldn't feel grateful; he hated that basic consideration from captors who thought he was a mindless beast soothed him. He hated that he liked Winters' voice, and liked the way it gentled when he talked to Nix.

Like Nix was his pet treeclimber.

Nix felt sick and turned away, crawling into the very back corner of his cage until his chain ran out and the collar almost choked him.

"All right, all right." Winters leaned back in his chair, picking up the reading brick again. Nix had hoped he would go away, so that Nix wouldn't have to look at him any more, but Winters stayed reading until a bell sounded early in the evening.

That night, after Nix had scarfed down his un-drugged slop, he dedicated about an hour trying to pick the heavy lock on the ground-level door. First he tried a stick, which only broke, the mechanism unmoved, and then one of his claws, which came so near to breaking he had to stop. The keys the food-bringing groundling carried were simple things. How hard could it be to pick the lock if only he had a piece of metal or iron wood?

That having failed, he swung up to wrap his tail around the bars at the back of the cage and swung upside down off of them for a while. The chain clanked and rattled enough to wake the birds next to him. Their disgruntled shrieks started the creature across the courtyard yipping again.

Afraid that he'd draw attention with the commotion, Nix dropped back to the ground. He hadn't especially felt anything give anyway, not even with his full weight behind it. If only he had some kind of leverage. All it would take would be bending a single bar out of place, and his grounding form could wriggle through. Too bad he didn't have a rope and pulley any more than he had a lockpick.

It took a long time for the yipping creature to settle down, and Nix folded his arms under his chin and listened to the echoes pensively. He tried to sleep and failed, and ended up lying in his cage trying to remember the details of a story one of the Star Aster mentors had told on rainy nights. It was an elaborate thing, polished by generations of use, about the courtship of a consort and queen back in the Reaches, how the queen'd had to fight three duels with other courts to win a consort so prized, and how the Arbora had woven their bloodlines into a triumph for her court. Star of course had descended from them, somehow. Nix had usually drifted off during the part about the lineage, but now he wished he could run it through in his mind. If he'd been better at remembering any of those stories, maybe he wouldn't be here now. There had definitely been a number about naive consorts who'd wandered out by themselves and gotten into sticky situations, though the fact that a number of those consorts ended up stolen by fierce young queens hadn't been the disincentive it might have been.

The only person at all queenlike here was General Taylor, who, for a variety of reasons, Nix hoped wasn't going to notice him in that light. Though he supposed Winters had some of the controlled ambition and regality of a daughter queen on her way up through court ranks.

The food really was making Nix delusional.

Winters limped in just after moonrise, carrying a bundle under one arm. Winters pushed it through the bars with enough force that it hit the ground in the middle of the cage. If Nix was fast enough, he could sink his teeth into Winters’ wrists, hold him there until he promised to let Nix go. He coiled his legs for the lunge, but he'd already missed his moment, and Winters stepped back from the cage and watched Nix expectantly.

Nix sighed. He supposed it couldn't hurt to look at whatever it was. It smelled of grasseater but not blood or fear. He left his corner and nosed against the bundle until it unrolled. It was the promised blanket, old and tattered but softer than anything in the cage. He didn't want to take the gift, but he didn't want to sleep on the ground, either. He wasn't sure what an animal would do. Nix glanced at Winters, but the moon was behind him, and his face in shadow.

"Guess I couldn't sleep, either," Winters said, "and I kept thinking of you in here by yourself. It's too small a cage for you. When the fighting's over, Speirs can catch another, and we'll turn the whole courtyard into an aviary. Would you like that?"

If Nix ripped the blanket in half and threw it at Winters, he wouldn't be able to sleep on it. Instead, he dug his claws into it and slunk back to the far corner of the cage. He tried not to picture one of his cluchmates like Hair, or—never in the Three Worlds—Blanche trapped in here with him.

"You mostly want to go fly, don't you?" Winters sat down on the chair not quite near enough for Nix to swipe through the bars, and tipped his head back to look up at the sky.

Unable to stop himself, Nix glanced up too. He watched the stars long enough to determine that no shadows of wings were occluding them, only clouds and the shadow of the wind-ships. Nix needed to stop fantasizing about his court coming to rescue him, and start working on how he was going to get out. He spread the blanket out. The grasseater smell was unsettling, but it was made of heavy fur, and cut the cold from the stone floor. He would sleep better on this, and heal faster. He circled around on the blanket a couple times to find the most comfortable position.

"They'll never ride you," Winters said, and Nix turned to him instinctively before he remembered he wasn't supposed to understand. Well, an animal would turn to a sudden sound, wouldn't it? Winters had settled into his chair and was staring at Nix contemplatively. Nix didn't know if Winters was looking at him, or through him to something in his mind's eye. Either way, Winters seemed to be speaking his thoughts aloud rather than talking to Nix. "You're a wild thing," he said. "You're meant to have all that sky to yourself, hunt in the wilds and answer to no one. They won't make a beast of burden out of you, no matter what Taylor's trainers try."

Winters' description of Nix was so far from the truth that Nix almost laughed. He'd already shown that he wouldn't last a day living in the wilds, right after he'd shown that he answered to absolutely everyone in two separate courts. But maybe Winters was talking about himself as much as about Nix. Nix wanted to ask what Winters had meant when he said he missed flying. He wanted to ask Winters a lot of things. Instead of talking, Nix turned around one final time and settled curled in a circle with his chin resting on his tail, watching Winters right back.

With a grunt of pain, Winters stretched his leg out in front of him, propping it up on a low rock. It was close enough to the cage that if Nix rushed him he just might be able to snag his ankle and drag him to the bars. And after that, what? Nix could reveal that he spoke and attempt to hold Winters hostage, but he didn't have much confidence that General Taylor was stupid enough to let a large, winged predator loose in the middle of his court. He would sacrifice Winters to protect his people. He might even sacrifice Winters to protect his pets. Nix stayed where he was. He wondered if Winters realised the danger, then wondered if he was testing Nix on purpose.

"I wonder if the General's right," Winters mused, "about what we'll need after the fighting stops. Seems like we've been fighting so long, no one knows how to stop."

Nix didn't think that the cure for soldier's heart was looking at caged animals, but he wasn't a groundling. Maybe it was good for them. Up until a few days before, he'd never been in a fight either, at least not one that didn't involve screaming, sulking, and at most throwing a teapot. Nix really wished someone would offer him some tea. He twitched the tip of his tail and flicked his spines forward.

"Guess you know all about fighting, big guy?" Winters asked, and then didn't notice when Nix rolled his eyes. "Speirs said you went down pretty easy, but Speirs likes to talk himself up, doesn't he?" A thin slant of moonlight caught the side of Winters' face as he pulled his lips back. Nix didn't know groundling expressions well enough to tell if it was humour, dislike or mockery. "He's a good man in combat," Winters added. "A real killer."

That Nix could have told Winters. He shifted to settle against the ground, glad for the blanket's warmth if not its smell, and hoped that Winters kept talking. The more Nix knew, the more likely it was that he wouldn't make a shitting mess of the escape.

"They'll need a killer on the line," Winters said. He started to stand up, as if he could turn and see through the walls to whatever their river-side battleground was, but his leg stopped him. He winced and rubbed his shin. "Guess we're both a bit worse for wear, huh? I caught an arrow too."

If it had been Speirs, Nix would have said he hoped it hurt, but he found that he was sorry for Winters. He clearly didn't want to be here much more than Nix did, and he couldn't leave without disobeying General Taylor, and risking his place. Nix didn't know if groundling generals were different from Raksuran queens, but soldiers seemed to be soldiers either way, as far as he could see.

"I don't know what I'll do if this is the end," Winters said. He looked at Nix and seemed to really see him, as well as any groundling could see black scales in the moonlight. "I've been in combat for four turns now. My farm's gone. My parents and sister are relocated to a safe area, but there's no land there. They expect me to go back and know what to do, when all I know how to do is fight."

Nix didn't understand why a soldier couldn't just be a soldier. That was how it worked, wasn't it? If Winters was good at fighting, why wouldn't he stay where he was and let the farmers farm? He supposed the Arbora changed castes occasionally, but it was a rare event.

"I'm so tired," Winters said, and he sounded it. His whole body seemed to ache for rest. Nix twitched his tail and told himself that trying to pull him in and wrap himself around Winters and keep him warm while he slept.

Nix really needed to get out of here, even the enemy was starting to look good.

"Don't know why," Winters continued. "Haven't done a damn thing since I got here except give reports and sleep." He shifted in the chair, trying to find a comfortable position, which was going to need a better chair. "Can't sleep now though. The dreams keep me up. Do you dream? Is it about hunting or flying free?"

 _Sometimes_ , Nix thought. Sometimes he dreamed about Mica, too, but that was even more futile than thinking he could hunt.

"Can't sleep, and I'm talking to a lizard." Again, Winters' mouth curved up, and Nix had a hard time reading his expression as anything other than gentle humour. "You're the best company in the keep, big guy."

That was either a dire summation of the citizenry of Currahee, or a comment on Winters' lack of sociability. Nix wasn't sure which was more the case, but suspected both were a factor.

Winters yawned and settled again, then didn't talk for the rest of the night. It was strangely companionable to have him there, still and silent as he was. Raksura were not meant to be solitary creatures, but rather more like the birds in the neighbouring cage. Nix supposed that if he couldn't be with one of his own kind for company, even the recriminating or resentful sort of company he'd been finding lately, then a groundling would do.

He liked that Winters talked to him, even if almost everything he said was nonsense.

Nix fell asleep before Winters did, drifting into the comfort of the blanket. He woke with the dawn a few hours later, and found Winters gone and the chair empty.

* * *

After that, Nix saw a fair bit of Winters, more so than General Taylor even. Winters seemed to like sitting near Nix, often holding a reading brick—which turned out to be called a book—but just as often idling the time away, staring at the sky or some place far beyond the fortress walls. He startled easily, Nix noticed, and didn't like being around other groundlings that much. Sometimes he talked to Nix, but mostly he was quiet. His leg seemed to be healing, but more slowly than Nix's wing.

Nix didn't think it would be long before he could fly again, at least far enough away from the fortress to hunker down and finish healing up. He'd taken to flapping his wings when no one was around, trying to build as much strength as he could and keep the muscles limber.

The problem that remained was getting out of the cage in the first place. He was considering somehow faking being drugged, and waiting for the groundling who changed his bandages to open the cage door, but that always happened in the daytime when there were a lot of people around, and someone would sound an alarm right away. There were often archers on the walls, and wind-ships coming and going. Nix would very much prefer an unobserved night time exit, where he could get as much of a head start as possible. That plan still involved either bending the bars or picking a lock, and both were stopping him cold.

All those hours with nothing to do but stare at the walls, not a scroll or a song or anyone to talk to, and Nix still couldn't think of a way out of there. He'd tried shaping lockpicks out of tree branches, a bit of tin he'd ripped off his food dish, sharpened stones, and none of them could get the door open. No amount of hauling on the bars could bend them enough to slip though. If pure frustration and boredom could be channelled into magical heat like a mentor could make warming stones to boil water, Nix would have melted his way out on the second day there.

Nix was pacing—or turning in tight circles and calling it pacing—on the evening of the sixth day in the fortress when General Taylor strolled in, less his usual followers, but with Winters limping in his wake. Winters had given up on the cane, but still moved stiffly and with obvious discomfort. General Taylor didn't seem to notice that, or slow his pace to accommodate it, and Winters clearly wasn't going to complain. Nix hated the way Taylor's possessive gaze ran over him, but he was almost glad when he stopped in front of Nix's cage; at least it allowed Winters to catch up and rest for a moment.

It was that lag that seemed to let Taylor notice that his soldier was still injured. "You going to be up to tomorrow?" he asked brusquely.

"Yes, sir," Winters replied, but he didn't sound enthusiastic. Was Taylor going to send him back into combat? Nix would have thought he wanted that, injured or not.

"If you can't..." Taylor started, but Winters was already shaking his head.

"No, sir. I can handle it fine. I appreciate the opportunity."

Taylor took a moment to look Winters over, his eyes lingering on his leg before snapping back up to Winters' face. "That's good, son. You need to get back at it."

"Of course, sir," Winters agreed neutrally.

"Good man," Taylor said, and started to turn away.

Nix had stopped pacing, and now sat crouched in the centre of his cage, hunched forward with his frills flattened against his neck. He didn't like the way Taylor talked to Winters like he thought he owned him, same as he thought he owned Nix.

"Something wrong, big guy?" Winters asked, attention drawn away from Taylor.

Nix hissed and whipped his tail back and forth. He was getting reckless, he knew, but he couldn't help responding these days.

"You talk to it?" Taylor asked, amused.

Winters shrugged. "Keeps me company, sir."

"Got to get you back on the line, son," Taylor said, chuckling indulgently as he moved off.

Nix crawled towards the bars, frills low and teeth bared for a fight. He'd bite Taylor if he were ever stupid enough to come near.

Winters, for his part, held up his hands and took a half step back, not falling this time. "All right, all right, I just asked." He had the same indulgent tone a teacher would use to talk to a fledgling, or perhaps one of those skylings that had some language but wasn't quite a person.

For a blinding moment, Nix wanted to rip his throat out, too, to disembowel him with his heel claws, to do any number of violent things to him that proper consorts ought not to consider. And it wasn't because Winter was treating him like a mindless animal, but because he'd fallen for Nix's trick, and Nix wanted him somehow to be smarter than that. Nix wanted Winters to look at him and see a person, to see _him_. Nix sighed dramatically and threw himself down on his stomach. Of all the stupid things the tedium of confinement were driving him to, being angry that one of his jailers hadn't caught him out had to top the list.

Nix flipped his tail forward to cover his nose, and ignored the way his obvious sulk made Winters chuckle, and how much he liked the sound of someone laughing.

"Okay, big guy," Winters said, "guess I won't try to teach you any tricks today, huh?"

Nix's frills flared in response, but he didn't look up, and then the bell sounded and Winters left to go in for what Nix had learned was the evening meal. He hoped Winters would come back after that, but he didn't. A night guard circled as dusk fell, and then nothing but the darkness and stars cut by the lines of his cage.

It was the night the moon was perfectly dark, and around midnight the green birds began to sing. Nix had never seen them do much of anything at night, but now they put their heads back and trilled, a complicated warbling of tones that they played back and forth between them. It reminded Nix a little of the cliffdwellers near Gale Iron. It reminded him of the teachers guiding fledglings through singing the little memory aid rhymes to help remember the skills of their caste.

Nix would never hear them again, he didn't think, and if he did, they'd just be a reminder of everything he couldn't be.

Nix lay with his head resting on his arm and tried not to listen to them. A wave of homesickness that had been building all day finally broke over him, and he felt desolation overflowing his heart. He had, of course, known that his chest could hurt like this just from grief, but he hadn't known that loneliness would do it too.

Across the courtyard, the other caged creature started to yip and cry in response to the birds, which echoed it back, and turned its howls into part of their song.

Nix couldn't help himself, he lifted his head and started the rising and falling beat of the tea ceremony song, with its warbles for the bubbling kettle and its soft lulls for the steeping of the leaves. Each verse had a pause for repeat, and the birds picked up the melody if not the actual words. They took the song and between them made it a distorted echo of fledglings singing in round with Nix as their teacher, like he'd never be the one to look after a clutch, not even his own.

He had to stop then, his voice becoming so thick it choked him. The birds carried on the tea ceremony song for a while, but it gradually distorted, drowning the too-familiar melody into trills and catches of their own. It felt like a dream of falling, wings trapped, unable to fly, and if he could have gotten through the bars, Nix would have murdered the birds right there.

Instead, he took up another song, a slow, sweet one about a queen who was strong and fierce and the eight courtship gifts she gave to a consort who pretended disinterest. It was the kind of song that had used to make his sister Blanche roll her eyes and secretly preen, and the Arbora get a little misty as they imagined perfect bloodlines and grand romance. Nix had learned that courtship wasn't like that, at least not in expectation of what came after, but the song had been a favourite when he was first out of the nursery and into the bowers.

If Nix were in the bowers, the rest of the court would start singing too, or at least the ones close enough to hear. Now he just had the birds picking up the melody and echoing it, their calls twisting around his voice like fledglings darting and flapping around the steady flight of a queen. It was something.

It was the kind of song that you could keep adding or making up verses for, so Nix did; trying to keep the sound going, he remembered all the increasingly silly courtship gifts Blanche and Hair had come up with and maybe the beat was a little off for some of them, but it had been then, too. The birds covered the worst of it, anyway.

Nix almost expected that he'd hear real voices singing back, carrying him forward, but the only sound was the scuff of a leather boot on stone. The song froze in Nix's throat, verse half finished, and the birds carried off on their own without him, not seeming to care that Winters was standing in front of the cage, having been watching for who knew how long. Nix could only see the barest outline of his body in the darkness, but knew him by scent, maybe even by shape too.

How had he been able to sneak up on Nix like that? Winters might not be walking with a stick any more, but he wasn't agile yet, either. He must have made enough noise to shake Nix loose from a dead sleep. Nix wanted to ask what Winters thought he was doing, but of course pets couldn't talk. Nix hadn't spoken a word in ten days.

It didn't matter. The song had been too much. Winters stepped forward and put his hands on the bars, oblivious to the idea that he was now well within reach of Nix's claws, and stared into the dark. His eyes didn't reflect light like Raksura's did, but his pale skin caught a little of the starlight, enough for Nix's night vision to tell him that Winters' eyes were wide with wonder.

"You're a person," Winters said.


	3. Chapter Three

Nix shrank back from Winters. Surely an animal would shrink away from a sudden intruder, or would it attack? Nix leaped forward, screeching like he had that first day when he'd startled Winters back onto his ass. It frightened the birds into silence, but Winters didn't flinch, not even when Nix flared his spines, bared his teeth and pressed his face through the bars so that his incisors nearly scraped Winters' nose.

"Should have seen it before." Winters sounded pleased with himself for figuring out Nix's secret.

If he had any sense, Nix would bite the smug bastard's face off before he tattled to General Taylor, and everyone started asking questions. It'd be easy to do. All Nix would have to do is reach through the bars and sink his claws into Winters' shoulder, pull him in close and tip his head back so that his throat was exposed. Nix could use his claws, or just the strength of his arms if he didn't want the taste of someone's blood in his mouth.

"But why haven't you said anything?" Winters leaned in closer, tipping his head to study Nix's eyes. These groundlings didn't see that well in the dark. "Do you speak Kedaic?" Winters asked in that language, heavily accented, but understandable.

He was so sure he was right, and Nix stood there frozen, his hands clenching the bars just above Winters'. He couldn't see a way out of this that wasn't killing Winters, and he didn't think he had it in him to murder someone for spotting him in his own stupidity.

"I'm sorry, I don't know any other languages," Winters said, speaking Altanic again. "Always meant to pick up a few more of the traders' tongues, but then with this war..." He frowned. "You're not from across the river, are you?"

That'd just about fit Nix's luck. He'd get out of the menagerie and into hot water for being a spy. "No, I'm not," he said in Altanic.

Winters blinked, taking half a step back. "Huh. Wasn't sure that would work."

Nix sighed and dropped back into the cage, falling into a crouch. It was too late to deny anything now, and what was more he didn't want to. He was too tired to play this game any more and more tired still of the silence that required. "Only because I'm an idiot," he said.

On the other side of the bars, Winters dropped to his haunches so that he sat at the same level as Nix's head. He was still holding onto the cage, still so close that Nix could pull him against the bars and hold his claws to Winters' throat until he made Taylor or whoever let Nix free.

"Why didn't you say something?" Winters demanded again. "You've been letting us—" he stopped on Nix's snarl. "We Toccoans don't keep people in cages when they haven't done anything to us."

"How would I know that?" Nix demanded, annoyed that he'd been pretending for days and days when apparently _asking_ to be let go was an option. "We don't keep animals in cages, either."

"Who are you?" Winters asked, the question seeming to have just occurred to him, and Nix didn't know if he meant what his name was or who his people were.

"My name is Nix," he said.

"Winters."

"I know," Nix answered, maybe a little smugly.

"Because you were listening to everything I've said when I thought I was talking to myself." Winters sounded chagrined by that, at least, and Nix could tell he was trying to think back and remember if he'd admitted anything compromising.

"Mostly I fell asleep," Nix said. "You're not that interesting."

Winters laughed, and Nix remembered how much he liked that sound. "Even the flying lizard in the cage thinks I'm dull," Winters said. "Guarnere will never let me live that down, if he finds out about it.

Slowly, Nix felt his frills lifting away from his back, and he nosed forward so that his head was just on the other side of the bars. His chain clinked as he moved, and Winters hissed through his teeth.

"Come here," he said. "I'm going to get that off of you."

Nix was halfway to the bars before he fell back again. He could get it off himself, if he wanted to, but he couldn't trust that either his way or Winters' would get him out of the cage after that. "What about General Taylor?"

"General Taylor can—" Winters started to say, but then hesitated. Nix knew he was more honest than loyal or stupid, and would know that letting the prize of the collection go wasn't going to make Taylor happy. "Well, I'll talk to him in the morning, but in the meantime, let's get this collar off of you."

Winters had a small knife in his pocket. He held Nix's head steady with a hand cupping his jaw, and picked the lock of the collar in moments, even working in pitch darkness.

Nix caught it before it clattered to the floor of the cell and twisted his head from side to side. Winters' hand slid off his jaw, the edge of his fingers accidentally brushing the raw skin along Nix's throat. Nix flinched, and Winters jerked his arm back. Nix didn't know if it was out of fear that Nix would bite him or not. He was still standing right up against the bars.

"Your general will let me go?" Nix asked, unable to let the moment pass. He had to keep Winters engaged, talk him into letting Nix go before the general either decided he didn't care that Nix was a person so long as he was a decorative one, or to work out that Nix was someone worth trading for. Not that Nix could fly yet anyway, or at least not very far.

"We're not from across the river," Winters said dismissively, but Nix's snort in reply seemed to make him stop and think. He stepped back from the cage, even as he still held onto it for balance. Nix wanted to follow him, to not give him room, but all he could do was put his hands over Winters' on the bars. "He won't like it," Winters added. "He likes owning oddities, especially beautiful ones, and..."

"It would be easier for him if I wasn't a person," Nix said flatly.

Winters let his head fall until his forehead touched the metal just above Nix's hands. "Yeah, I guess it would."

"You liked talking to me more when you thought I couldn't understand you?" Nix knew he was goading him now, but he had to show Winters why this was wrong.

Winters was turning the knife in his hands. Its thin blade would pick the lock on the door just as easily as it had undone Nix's collar. All he had to do was give it to Nix, and he could get out. "I don't—" he started to say, and then faltered.

He wanted Nix to tell him that he understood why Winters was going to leave him in that cage, at least until morning. He wanted Nix's forgiveness.

"Shit," Nix hissed and flared his frills up, before whirling and stalking back towards his blanket. It felt good to move without the chain clanking behind him. It felt good to be able to lie on soft wool instead of bare rock. Winters had been willing to give him that much, but not to let him go. Nix almost threw himself down in another one of his sulks, but in the end he turned back to the bars and said, "I can't fly away."

"What?" Winters asked, taken aback. "Speirs said..."

"Speirs shot me in the wing," Nix answered. "Even if you let me out, I won't be able to get out of the castle, and I don't know where to go anyway." Though they both knew he would be able to disembowel and eat just about any of these soft-skinned groundlings, should he want to.

Winters shook his head, his forehead rubbing back and forth across the metal. "I can't. I have orders. It's just a few more hours, and... and I'll stay with you, if you want."

It was the best Nix was going to get. It wasn't like one of the warriors would act before a queen could tell them what to do, even if they realised the queen had been in error. An irrational preference on Nix's part, and a friendliness and even occasional kindness on Winters' didn't change where their loyalties lay.

"Yeah," Nix said, "Yeah, I'd like that." He turned away, but only so that he could put his back to the bars and slide to the ground, pulling his wings forward to wrap around himself as if he were still a fledgeling.

"I'm sorry I can't do more, big guy," Winters told him. He too sat on the ground, so that he and Nix had only the cage between them. Nix heard Winters shuffle as he stretched his leg out and sifted to get comfortable, then his head fell back and he looked up at the sky above them. Nix did too, and the back of their heads touched. The night was brilliant with stars.

Winters' hair felt soft against Nix's frills, and he had to wonder what it would feel like to touch Winters while Nix was in his groundling form. Nix had never gone so long without shifting, and the strain was getting to him. He ached for the more sensitive and vulnerable feel of that other shape. He could touch Winters' hand palm to palm, and they would feel alike, save that Nix's hands were the soft skin of a consort, and Winters was still a soldier.

"What were you singing?" Winters asked, and Nix started a little, and had to think back. The birds had settled back to sleep, their moon-dark midnight song seeming to have passed.

"Wasn't anything really," Nix said, not wanting to explain, "used to sing it with my clutchmates. Guess I was homesick."

"Clutchmates?" Winters asked. and Nix realised he was going to have to decide how much he was willing to give away about Raksuran courts. It wasn't a secret, not really, but contact with outside traders was also rare enough that only a handful of peoples knew Nix's people existed and fewer still understood anything about their society. Still, he couldn't see the harm in saying a few things.

"We're usually born five together, and raised by the teachers in the nursery," he said. There'd only been him, Hair and Blanche, but that Nix knew wasn't to just be spread about. And if he didn't really want to end up being ransomed, he certainly couldn't mention that his parents were the ruling queen and her first chosen consort, or that he'd been born of their first and only clutch.

Winters whistled. "Five? I thought one little sister was enough trouble."

"Is your sister a soldier too?" Nix asked, happy to turn the conversation away from himself. Winters had said something about her earlier, but Nix hadn't really been paying attention.

"Of course not," Winters said, in a way that made Nix pretty sure he'd stepped into some kind of cultural misunderstanding. "Do your women fight?"

Nix snorted in disbelief. "Stopping them's the problem. Especially the young queens."

"Huh." Winters thought about that for a while, and Nix let him. He hadn't thought about a people whose women weren't the fiercest fighters. "No," Winters said eventually, "She'd be too young, even if she was a boy. They're not taking them as young as thirteen turns, even now. My parents used to farm. They ran a kind of grasseater on the highlands to the east, but that's all burned now. They tried to starve us out, took out half our farmlands, and we need to trade for food now, when before..."

Nix remembered now that Winters had said he was expected to go home and take up his family's work, wherever that might end up being. In a way, there was a strange symmetry to their lives. Nix had just been sent back to a family that had no idea what to do with him, too, and after being away about as long as Winters had been at war.

"Everyone talks like they know what will happen after the fighting stops, but we don't, not really." Winters sighed and shifted again. His leg seemed to be giving him trouble, probably because he was sitting on the cold ground in the middle of the night.

If Nix could have, he'd have wrapped his wings around Winters, and kept both of them warm. As it was, he reached his foot out and snagged the blanket. He crumpled it up and shoved it through the bars so that it fell beside Winters. "Here, you go."

Nix thought it was a sign of how tired and uncomfortable Winters was that he took the blanket without protest, folding it into a small square and resting his leg on it. "Boy, I'm glad I gave you that, now," he said. "But why in the worlds didn't you say anything?"

"I met Speirs, and thought you people might eat your prisoners," Nix answered, which made Winters laugh.

"He's not that bad!" Winters protested, but Nix thought it was largely for form's sake, at least until Winters added more seriously, "He's a good soldier. One of the best."

Nix was rapidly getting the feeling that "good soldier" was about the highest praise Winters knew how to give, so he let it be. "So you probably won't eat me, is what you're saying?"

"Probably not," Winters agreed. "Maybe just trade you for food. How many grasseaters do you think you're worth?"

Nix stiffened, wrapping his tail more tightly around himself so that it didn't lash in displeasure. "Exactly one grasseater's tooth," he snapped.

Winters had gone still too, and Nix wondered how much he'd just given away, but finally Winters said, "I guess that wasn't funny, huh?"

"Oh, you have no idea," Nix said, and made himself laugh. Honestly, it was funny, in a way, how Winters had so quickly hit on the thing Nix feared most. "See, I don't exactly have a lot to go home to myself."

He thought Winters would pry, and then Nix could hint, and deny and play out a case that really they should just throw him out as a thing of no value, but all Winters said was, "I'm sorry," in a soft, sympathetic voice that almost made Nix feel bad for leaning on his own misfortune. Especially when it wasn't like his home had burned, like Winters' had. It just didn't know what to do with him, and quite possibly didn't want him.

"I think I'll be able to fly soon," Nix said. "Then I'll be out of your way."

"I'd say we'd send you back in a wind-ship," Winters said, "but I don't think we can spare one. The Colonel has them all with Speirs and our companies. They're out there right now. There'll be an attack at dawn. I only hope it's the last one."

He didn't sound like he thought it would be, any more than he'd agreed with General Taylor saying that the fight at the river was the enemy's last push forward.

"I miss flying," Winters added wistfully. "I guess you know what it's like."

Nix couldn't help saying, "I think I go a little faster than those platforms of yours."

Winters chuckled and half turned to see if Nix meant it, though it was still almost full dark, a faint line of grey just touching the castle walls. "Not after you jump off of them," he said, and he sounded like he was entirely serious.

"You got wings too?" Nix asked, trying not to sound impressed. Those wind-ships went high.

"We make them out of silk," Winters answered, which Nix couldn't picture, but he let it slide, too baffled by this new bit of symmetry, now in his own way Winters was half groundling, half skyling, almost like the Raksura, though not so beautiful. His back was warm against Nix's and he seemed to be drifting towards sleep even as the sky lightened. "I wish I could say I won't miss it."

There, at least, they were different. Nix had never had a purpose he could miss. Or rather, when he had, he'd proved himself unable to fulfil it, and in possession of no other options. He didn't miss being Carnelian's consort, and he certainly didn't miss Star Aster, but he supposed he missed the feeling that finally his life could be worth something more, that he and his queen could create something together, something more than just the clutch required of him. Maybe Blanche had been right, and Nix did sing too many ballads, and had raised his expectations too high, dreaming that he and Carnelian would be the next Gale and Iron, but he'd at least wanted them to be _something_.

"Used to think all I wanted was to be left alone," Nix said. If he squinted his eyes, the stars turned to a flickering blur against the dark. "Turns out, if I'd been given a choice, I'd have picked something else."

Winters huffed a laugh and let his head drop forward. He pulled up one knee and curled his body around it before, apparently, falling into sleep like a stone.

Nix half wanted to wake him to make sure that was what had really happened, but he knew that Winters probably needed the rest. He just wished it were somewhere more apparently comfortable. For his part, Nix stayed awake, watching the sky lighten and then the dawn touch the top of the keep. Winters' back was warm against his, and it felt almost like sharing a bower with someone, or would if it weren't for the bars. Nix didn't have words for how much he missed sex, even just the playful tumbles with the other consorts in the Star Aster bowers. None of his old companions in Gale Iron had been interested on his return, or maybe it was just that Nix hadn't given them a chance to be interested before he'd flown off and gotten himself kidnapped.

As the light grew, the workers charged with looking after the animals started to make their rounds. The woman who'd looked after Nix's wounds coming to an abrupt halt at the sight of Winters curled up right in front of Nix's cage, and Nix not seeming to be interested in eating him.

"Captain Winters!" she gasped, and Nix said, "Wake up, Winters," and then the whole situation just got embarrassing.

It turned out that no one really knew what to do about accidentally keeping a person in a cage for six days, and Nix didn't know how he should react to their mix of apologies and demands for explanations as to why he hadn't just said something in the first place. He thought of Diamond's haughty aloofness when dealing with emissaries from what she considered a lesser court, and attempted to copy that, but the truth was he was glad he was in his Aeriat form which made his facial expressions more opaque. None of the groundlings seemed to know how to read the ripples of embarrassment in his frills.

Eventually, someone fetched General Taylor from his morning meal, and then they had to do it all again, though at least that got Nix out of the cage. Then, Nix was too busy stretching his back and arching his wings up to their full span to say much, and just let Winters repeat everything he'd already said. The story that he'd been afraid Speirs was going to eat him seemed to be taken with reasonable good humour and more plausibility than Nix had originally intended.

Taylor, once he'd had a moment, didn't seem the least intimidated by Nix being a head taller and having claws that clicked on the stone as he shifted his weight. Instead, Taylor wore a coat of bluster and glared up at Nix like the whole thing was his former captive's fault.

"And your people are skylings who nest out in the savannah?" he asked again, and didn't look happy when Nix shrugged. It hadn't escaped Nix's memory that not long ago Taylor had been talking about trying to train Nix as a mount.

"Somewhere around there," Nix said. "We're spread out."

"Our hunting parties don't usually go as far as Captain Speirs' did," Winters added, drawing Taylor's attention. "We hadn't needed to when we had our own herds."

"War makes close neighbours," Taylor mused, looking again at Nix's wings, which he'd folded now. The acquisitive look was back in his eyes, and Nix didn't like not knowing why.

His chest wound was starting to ache, and he didn't know if it was from lack of sleep or the stretching he'd just done. Either way, it didn't bode well for flying. He'd known that, but he still wished he could leap on top of his old cage and flap away over the walls, just for the look on Taylor's face when he realised he didn't own Nix any more. Instead, Nix lifted his chin and sniffed before glancing at Winters.

Winters was pointedly looking at the space above General Taylor's shoulder, but his mouth curled up just a little, an expression almost too subtle to notice.

Taylor certainly seemed to have missed it. He folded his arms, and gave Nix another once over. "Well. I suppose we owe it to you to put you up, in better accommodations, mind, until you're in good enough shape to go back to your people."

The way he phrased that was so careful that it left Nix with the impression that by the rules of Currahee, Taylor probably owed him more than that, but Nix didn't want to press the point. Mostly he just wanted to sleep, preferably in the better accommodations Taylor had mentioned, so he just said, "Thank you, General," and tried to nod regally, as though granting a favour.

"I can put him up in my billet," Winters added quickly. "He said he'd be healed soon, probably faster than I will."

Just then a runner found Taylor, and he just said that would be fine before turning away to other business. Winters went to put a guiding hand on Nix's back, but it got tangled in his frills, and he ended up awkwardly patting Nix's hip as he steered him towards the keep. Nix went where he was pushed, hoping wherever it was wasn't far because Winters was limping badly from his night outside, and Nix could hardly seem to keep his eyes open.

Of course Winters' room was up three flights of stairs. Had he been limping up and down them this whole time? No wonder he wasn't healing quickly. It had a wooden door, and was a small, cold stone room with a narrow window closed in by some kind of translucent shell cut into squares and set in a metal tracery. It didn't let a lot of light in, even in the full sun of morning.

"Generous of you to share," Nix noted, looking around the place. It didn't take long. A narrow cot with a straw-stuffed sleeping mat filled one side of the room, and a desk and chest the other, with just enough space to walk between them.

"I'm, uh, just going back out anyway, so it's all yours."

"Why would you do that?" Nix demanded. He couldn't picture Winters making it back down all those stairs, at least not walking rather than falling, and if he did, he certainly wouldn't get back up.

"That runner," Winters said, but he wasn't moving from where he leaned in the doorway. "There'll be reports of the battle by now, casualty lists. I should..."

"Sure, you can fall over on the messenger," Nix snapped. "I'm sure that will be an invaluable aid to the situation." He was used to being the idiot in the room, and didn't like Winters usurping his role. Was this how his mother felt every time she talked to Nix?

"I'm supposed to take over training the recruits this morning," Winters protested. "That's what Taylor was talking about last night."

"Fall over on them too!" Nix said and tried to wave in exasperation, but ended up scraping his knuckles on the wall. When he flared his spines, they hit the ceiling. "It'll be educational."

Winters laughed, and said that Nix was probably right, and that he'd steal another sleeping mat to put on the floor. "Speirs' room is next to mine."

For the first time since the start of his captivity, Nix remembered the collar Carnelian had given him. Was it worth asking Winters to steal it back from Speirs? No, he decided. Winters hadn't even been willing to let Nix out of a cage. He wouldn't test their tentative companionship by asking Winters to steal from one of his fellow soldiers, even if Nix was in the right. Besides, what did he care for jewels given to him by his former queen? He ought to have returned them when Star Aster had sent him packing. She'd probably have asked him to, if it weren't for Mica.

Winters saw Nix's hesitation, and hovered a moment before leaving the room and entering the next. He had to pick the lock, Nix noticed, and didn't seem to as much as hesitate over doing it. Maybe Nix should have asked him for the collar after all. But Winters just came out with another sleeping mat stuffed with straw and sweet herbs, and another wool blankets. At least these didn't smell like they'd last been used to rub down grasseaters.

Nix eyed the bed frame, lifting the edge of it experimentally. It was just light wood with a woven rope lattice that made the straw softer, and if Nix flipped it on its side, it'd leave most of the floor space clear. "If we put both of them on the floor, we could sleep together," Nix pointed out.

Winters froze, mat hoisted on one shoulder, midway to swinging it onto the floor. "Pardon?" he asked, as if Nix had slipped into a language he didn't speak.

"It would be more comfortable," Nix said, not sure how this had gotten off the trail he'd intended. "I won't fit on the bed, and you won't be able to get off it without stepping on me." Besides which, Nix missed the contact of sharing a nest. Even at Star Aster after Carnelian had thrown him out of her bower, one of the young consorts had usually been looking for someone to cuddle. The warriors on the flight home had not, and he hadn't had enough time at Gale Iron to work out where his bower even was, so it had been days and days since he'd slept curled up with someone. Raksura weren't meant to sleep alone. Nix had started to suspect that was not true of this particular kind of groundling, who had such narrow beds, and one of whom was staring at him with wide grey eyes.

"Uh, well," Winters said, and ran his hand through his coppery hair. "I suppose."

"I don't bite unless you want me to," Nix added, though he wasn't sure if the groundlings used the same method of a gentle nip on the shoulder to signal a desire for sex. Did they even have sex? It was possible they had other customs, like those skylings who fertilised their eggs in little floating ponds. Nix probably shouldn't be thinking about Winters and sex at all.

Winters shook his head slightly, then twisted his mouth in resignation and tipped his head towards the bed frame. Nix pulled the mat off and pushed the frame against the wall, Winters dropped the other mat onto the floor. It made most of the room into a bed, but it wasn't like they were using it for anything else.

Nix lay down and curled on his side with his wings folded out of the way and against the wall. He pulled his legs up and wrapped his tail over them, spent a few moments fussing with the blankets, and then glanced up to see what Winters was doing.

Winters was still standing in the doorway, grimacing down at Nix. He met Nix's eyes, then seemed to come to a conclusion. "I need to hear those reports," he said, and turned away. Nix didn't have the will to stop him. The bedding smelled sweet, like when the Arbora spread crushed flowers around the bowers, and Nix was on his second day awake. Winters could do what he wanted; Nix wasn't his queen.

That Winters was so clearly unwilling to lie beside Nix ought not to have bothered him as much as it did. Hogging the blankets resentfully, Nix tried not to let the hurt show. He shouldn't have bothered; Winters had already left, his dragging step audible even though the closed door.


	4. Chapter Four

Nix slept only fitfully, always half expecting Winters to come back and sack out next to him. The comfort of the bed just made the lack of a companion all the keener. Finally, having given up on napping around midday, Nix went to see if he could find either Winters or some food. Real, cooked food, not offal and slop.

Nix hadn't noticed before, but the castle corridors seemed to be populated largely by women and small groundlings who were presumably too young to fight. They wore different colours and cuts of clothing than the soldiers like Winters and Speirs. They all seemed to know who Captain Winters was, at least, and pointed Nix in the direction he asked.

For that matter, they all knew who Nix was, or knew that the large, scaled skyling walking through the halls wasn't planning to eat them. Yet. They kept at least an arm's reach away whenever the width of the corridors allowed it.

Nix should probably just shift to his groundling form. They'd find it less alarming, even if the shifting itself might worry them. He was probably stupid for holding onto that secret after Winters and the general had said they'd help him, or at least shelter him until he was well enough to go home on his own. His soft flesh and lack of claws might even make Winters more likely to sleep with him, and it would be a relief to finally shift after ten days stuck in his Aeriat form.

It was just that he didn't entirely trust his new hosts, not when they'd spent so long keeping him behind bars. If they decided they wanted a pet again, Nix wanted the ability to become less visible, to disappear even, and become lost in the crowd. He also wanted to be able to keep them underestimating him.

Which all meant terrifying the groundlings assigned to scrub things, and Nix almost felt bad about that. One of them pointed him to where she'd last seen Winters, a room full of weapons of one sort or another. It reeked of oil and hot metal, though no one was working the sharpening wheels just then. Nix didn't see Winters, but a young groundling sitting in the corner doing something complicated with strips of leather put his finger over his lips and tilted his head towards an alcove at the back of the room.

In it was a bed, and on that was sprawled Winters, sound asleep.

Nix swore, but softly enough so as not to wake the man he'd thought of as his friend, however naive that had turned out to be.

Nix dropped to a crouch in front of the boy and murmured, "When he wakes up, tell him I've gone looking for food." The boy's eyes widened. Nix sighed. "In the kitchens. I'm not going to eat anyone, for shit's sake."

"Yes, sir," the groundling said, and he still looked alarmed, but that was hardly Nix's fault. People shouldn't go around assuming that other species would eat them. Except for the Fell, of course, who ate people all the time, but no one had seen one of them near here in living memory, so the kid shouldn't have heard of that.

Which was probably good for Nix, if Raksuran consorts and Fell rulers looked as much like one another as people said.

The kitchens turned out not to be where one got food, but rather a big eating hall with long tables that were not meant for people with tails. However, people in the castle all seemed to get something to eat from the same pot, and once Nix made clear that even if he thought that cooking meat was strange, boiled meat and grain was actually preferable to day-old raw entrails, no one balked at serving him. No one sat next to him either. The stew was bland, but entirely edible, and something of a relief. They had some kind of alcohol, the weak sort that groundlings often drank instead of water, which didn't affect Raksura at all. Nix took an earthenware cup full of it, but missed tea.

It seemed to be meal time, though Nix hadn't noticed the bell, and about fifty people lined up for wooden bowls of food. He'd wondered if the fit men were confined to the essential parts of the castle, and if there were guards elsewhere, but all the males Nix saw were either wounded or too small or too old to be a warrior. He'd definitely seen some archers on the walls before, plus the men of Taylor's entourage, but that didn't make enough to defend a place like this. Maybe the fighting men ate at a different time, or was everyone else down at the river? The thought made Nix uneasy in the way that walking into a colony without passing any Arbora soldiers would.

If an attack came, Nix could probably fly far enough to get clear of it, but what about Winters?

Winters was still sleeping when Nix finished his food and went back to the equipment room, leaving Nix with little to do but wander around the castle. He ended up on one of the ramparts above the menagerie, looking out over the savannah towards home. There weren't any wind-ships moored just then, and Nix had a clear view down the cliff, over a few low hills, to the wide expanse that those who'd seen it compared to the sea. The air was hazy with noontime heat, but Nix squinted out across the distance and tried to pick out any sign of the escarpment that Gale Iron called home.

Even knowing the direction, he didn't think he could. It was too far. If his wing healed, when his wing healed, it was going to be a long flight home, especially given what a terrible hunter Nix was. He'd probably spend more time failing to catch grasseaters than he would covering distance. He stretched and flapped his wings. The injured one moved more easily now, and he had to tell himself that it couldn't just be getting out of that cage. He hadn't healed more slowly in confinement, because he was miserable. Enough force, and he lifted lightly off the ground, but his wings didn't catch the air and take him away. Nix would have to spring up for that to really work, and he didn't want to risk it from this high in case his wing wouldn't hold him. It felt like being a fledgling all over again. Only now he knew better than to expect anything from the Three Worlds, not without taking it by the throat first.

"Shit," Nix muttered, his chest aching for his court as much outside the cage as it had inside it. Not having bars between him and the smudge on the horizon didn't make it any nearer, or more likely that he'd see it any time soon.

"Looking for home?"

One of the reasons Nix would never survive in the wilds without a warrior guard was that he absolutely had not noticed General Taylor on the ramparts beside him until he spoke.

"It's out there somewhere," Nix said, not wanting to commit to a location. "I was a ways off when Speirs shot me."

He half expected Taylor to apologise again, but it seemed that he considered what he'd said sufficient to the kidnapping and imprisonment. "We've never met your people before," Taylor commented, which was halfway to an explanation.

"We like to keep to ourselves," Nix answered. He didn't want to supply that Gale and Iron had moved into the area from the Reaches only fifty turns before, and no one at the court they'd established had a single clue what they were doing. The only neighbours they'd met had been a handful of skylings who were enough like people to talk, but kept migrating in a pattern no one had worked out. "We might be interested in trading," he said, cautiously, then added, "once your war is over."

"You have any say in that, son?" Taylor asked.

Nix's frills twitched at the familiarity of speaking to a ruling queen's first-born consort like that, but instead of answering he equivocated with, "A few may listen to me." Which was technically true when it came to Blanche and Hair, but unlikely to win Taylor any sway when it came to Nix's mother Diamond's decisions. But then, having kidnapped Nix would either raise or lower Taylor in her estimation.

Taylor looked as if he knew he was being played, but didn't press Nix for answers just yet. Nix hoped he wasn't laying on his attitude with too broad a stroke. He didn't want to circle back to being worth ransoming for whatever Gale Iron was willing to give for Nix.

Nix privately decided that if he ever did get home, and if Taylor's people ever did end up in Diamond's court appealing for trade, Nix was going to wear every scrap of jewellery he could borrow just to show him up. But that was for later.

For now, he said, "You said the war would be over soon?"

Taylor nodded, his own gaze becoming distant. He seemed to be looking down on the plane as though it were a map, and he could see the placement of his men drawn on it. "Soon," he said. "There are other keeps. Other battles, but it will be over before the harvest. What's left of it. They can't last another winter."

Nix wondered if Fortress Currahee could either. He didn't know what this sort of groundling should appear, but they had a leanness to them that he suspected was not how they were meant to look. Nix had never gone long without food, passing out and forgetting to eat not included, and couldn't say he liked the idea of it. He didn't like the idea of Winters going hungry as his people died around him.

As if summoned by the thought, Nix heard Winters' dragging steps making their way along the battlement behind Taylor. He touched his hand to his forehead, and said, "Was worried Nix had flown away without saying goodbye, sir."

Nix's tail switched, but he stayed silent as Taylor replied, "He'll be with us a few more days, he says," like Nix wasn't even there, then dismissing him from consideration and changing the topic. "Is that leg of yours well enough to show some visitors around the keep?"

"Of course, sir," Winters asked without hesitating, though from the way he'd hauled himself up the stairs earlier, Nix suspected that the castle's healers wouldn't agree.

"Good, good." Taylor had his back entirely turned to Nix now, but even without being able to see his face, Nix knew that he'd become entirely focused on the problems of the moment, worries about next season's harvest having been pushed aside. "I'm expecting Captain Dike in the next few days, and the bird he sent ahead said he'd met another wind-ship, one from up north, with a friendly crew. A few of them have agreed to join Dike's ship and travel here to establish relations. They say they're from some place called the Golden Islands."

Winters shook his head slightly. "I'm afraid I'm not familiar with it, sir."

"I'm not either, son," Taylor said, but Nix thought there was an edge of disappointment in his tone, "but see what you can dig up in the meantime. Take Nix with you, if you like."

Meaning, keep an eye on the other guest too, Nix suspected, but he said nothing.

"Yes, sir," Winters said, but didn't sound very enthusiastic. Was it that he didn't want to spend that day poking through the archives, or the next showing visitors around the keep? Or maybe Winters didn't want to be charged with continuing to mind after Nix, like a teacher supervising fledgelings on their first trip out of the nursery.

He hated that Winters might think of him as a burden, not as though he were a friend, as though he were someone good enough to touch. Nix glanced sideways at him, and was pleased to see that the lines of fatigue had eased in his face. The late afternoon sun caught in his hair and set a gold cast on his sallow skin. Winters was looking off over the plains too, expression soft.

Nix wanted to shift into his groundling form right there and take Winters in his arms, press their soft-skinned bodies together. He wanted to bury his face against Winters' neck, and breathe in his exotic scent until the whole world disappeared. He wanted Winters to desire him. Nix hadn't been in this much trouble since Carnelian had first turned his head, and at least he was _supposed_ to want her.

Taylor was saying something, and Nix wasn't listening. There was a pause following the lifted voice of a question, and Nix realised Taylor had just asked him something, and that Winters was standing behind Taylor, shifting his weight against the parapet in discomfort. Nix had been staring.

"Come again?" he asked, and Taylor scowled at him, not a man used to being ignored.

"Do your people know the Golden Islanders?" he repeated.

Nix shrugged. The name seemed faintly familiar, but if Star Aster had had a connection with them, it hadn't been the kind of thing the ruling queen thought Nix should know about it, and he'd been out of touch with the doings of Gale Iron for too long. Not wanting to tip off that he had less knowledge of his court's alliances than he'd implied by saying he could influence them, he settled on saying blandly, "We don't discuss our treaties with strangers."

That didn't make Taylor look happier, but Nix didn't give a shit. He just wanted to take Winters and find the library or whatever it was.

Winters seemed to have the same thought, or at least wanted to get Nix and Taylor apart from each other. He cleared his throat and said something bland about wanting to get to work, if that was all right with the general.

Taylor looked between them for a moment before saying, "I'd like a word, Captain," and dismissing Nix with a glance.

If he'd been surer of his wing, Nix would have leaped from the wall and glided down to the courtyard below, making a proper exit of it. However, he didn't want to risk ruining the effect by falling on his face after his wing folded on him, so he swished his tail, flicked his spines and walked back down the stairs like any other groundling.

He wandered back over to the birds' cage—his own standing empty with the door unlocked—and watched them fluttering about and hissing at each other. He could open their cage and let them all fly loose through the keep, probably biting anything they found with those needle-like teeth of theirs. There would be some satisfaction in that, but Nix doubted it would last long. The Toccoans would probably just shoot them down and eat them.

"You all right?" Winters asked, coming up beside Nix.

Nix shook his head, and said, "Glad I'm not in there any more, I guess."

He glanced at Winters, who was wearing a pinched expression like he was forcing his face not to show what he felt. He did that when he was in physical pain, Nix had noticed, and when Taylor told him something he didn't like. Winters said nothing, for a moment then turned away from the cage, limping back towards the keep and expecting Nix to follow.

Asking what Taylor had said would probably be pointless, and asking what was the matter with Winters doubly so, so Nix said, "I don't read Altanic, so if I'm supposed to be helping you in the library, you'll be limited to my good looks and charm."

"I'm sure I'll find some use for you," Winters grumbled, and Nix almost stopped, trying to work out if the double meaning was intended or not. It would have been had Nix said it.

"Oh yeah?" Nix asked. He caught up to bump shoulders with Winters, curling one wing around him for a moment. "I'd like to hear more about that."

These groundlings were so pale that their skin changed colour as their faces heated. Winters cut a look sideways at Nix, and his mouth twitched up in a small smile, but instead of either pulling away from Nix's sideways embrace or saying anything to make his position clear one way or another, Winters just leaned against Nix's shoulder for a moment before he continued walking. The warmth of his body brushed against Nix's, and Nix curled his wing a little tighter around Winters. Under the cover of the wing, he put his hand on the small of Winters' back. The muscles trembled under Nix's touch, and Nix felt a flush of pleasure rush through him when Winters didn't flinch away. If they'd both been Raksura, Nix would have leaned over and nipped Winters' ear, making his affection clear.

Nix glanced at Winters, and he was still smiling, just a little bit and like he was trying to hold it back, but it was definitely a smile. Nix wished he could be sure of it, or of anything in this place. Winters seemed like the most solid, reliable thing he'd found here so far, but as Nix himself had proved, appearances could hide a lot.

"You've never heard of the Golden Isles, then?" Winters asked suddenly.

"I didn't say that," Nix answered. He should pull back, closing in on himself, but he kept his hand on Winters' back. "I said I don't share secrets."

Winters' smile widened, and from the way he looked sideways, Nix knew he'd been seen for a liar. "Well, I haven't heard of them either," Winters said. "But the library has a few books from the old days, when people travelled more. We might find something there."

"Still don't read Altanic," Nix commented, but he was curious about this library. He wondered if anyone had recorded the Raksura in it.

"Don't worry, some of the books have pictures," there was an edge of laughter in Winters' voice that made Nix smile in return.

The library was on the south side of the keep with high windows of something clear that let light in. Nix bet that Gale Iron would trade for that alone, but then got distracted by shelves with rows of books. Winters trailed his fingers across a couple before pulling a big flat one down and passing it to Nix. This close, Nix could see that the pages were made of animal hide scraped impossibly thin. "These are something else," Winters said, genuine awe making his voice soft. "General Taylor talks about needing beauty after the war, and he means those cages, but..." Winters guided his hands over Nix's, opening the book to a map of the three worlds with Currahee at its centre. Winters licked his fingers and turned a page, and Nix nearly gasped, it was filled with drawings of all kinds of skylings, from the little green birds caged below to the great web-spinning cloud dwellers that even the Raksura rarely saw.

"Huh," Nix said, scanning the page for Raksura, then turning to the next. His people didn't seem to have made it into Toccoans' records, but hundreds of other creatures had. Nix took the thing to a small table and folded the pages back to the start. That was a more detailed map of the valley below Currahee on the side opposite the savannahs. Winters found a piece of chalk and scratched some symbols in Altanic on a slate. "Golden Isles," he said, then, "Golden Islanders," after scratching a similar set. It was a different enough script from Raksuran that Nix didn't have much optimism about picking a few words out of the densely packed pages.

"Sure." He took the slate anyway, looking at the angular patterns of the words. He tried to memorise the shapes of them, but honestly it didn't make much sense when one was used to the swooping word sculptures of Raksuran. Having things all in a line might be a good use of space, but Nix didn't see how there could be any art to it. He paged through anyway, largely looking at the pictures. He had to hold the edges of the hide carefully so his claws didn't damage it.

Winters, meanwhile, had taken a couple smaller books down and carried them over to a chair under the window. He stretched his bad leg out across the seat and tucked the other under him. The afternoon sun caught in his hair, like it was polishing him, and the little frown of concentration as Winters read softened his face. Nix could picture him like this in the consort bowers at Gale Iron, curled up reading in Nix's bed. He'd be wearing fewer clothes of course.

Telling himself to get a grip, Nix turned back to his pictures. He thought he found the escarpment Gale Iron had settled into, but there didn't seem to be any particular notation around it. The map had likely been made before the colony had moved there. Touching the place with the tip of this claw, Nix glanced up at Winters again, but he was immersed in his reading, paging quickly through to search the contents for mention of the Currahee's potential allies. He was quite pretty when he was focusing, Nix thought.

Nix's book didn't extend to the Reaches, the ancestral home of the Raksura, just showing the edge of them with a fanciful drawing of a line grandfather in the centre of the unmapped trees. Nix studied the picture, and couldn't see that someone would recognise him based on it. He didn't find any pictures of the Fell either, but of course people usually got eaten before they could draw the Fell, and fleeing groundlings weren't known for accurate memories.

In the end, if there were any mentions of the Golden Isles in front of Nix, he didn't see them after looking through the book a few times, and he eventually got bored and started to poke around the little room for something else to study.

The writing was all the angles of Altanic, with nothing of use to Nix. Some of the shelves also had curiosities on them, skulls of small animals or particular feathers, some polished stones which the Arbora would trade a lot for. Nix rubbed a piece of malachite, thinking of his lost collar.

He didn't realise that the rustle of pages had fallen silent until he turned and found that Winters was staring at Nix rather than the words in front of him. His lips were parted and his eyes a little misty, but Nix couldn't work out why.

"Something the matter?" Nix asked.

Winters shook his head, and looked back at the book in front of him, cheeks turning pink again.

He liked the look of Nix, it seemed. Well, who wouldn't? Nix knew that the sunlight made the gleaming brown under-sheen of his black scales shimmer like quartz crystals. He was the kind of pretty that got a consort kidnapped by an avaricious queen in the old stories, at least by Raksuran standards. It seemed that some of that might apply to this particular flavour of groundling as well.

Nix crossed over to the window, looking down at Winters who stared up at him with an expression of deliberately bland inquiry. Instead of saying anything, Nix shrugged and dropped to the floor in front of Winters' seat. Winters made an inquiring noise, but Nix ignored him, instead settling so that he was leaning against the chair, with his head resting on Winters' hip. Winters’ breath caught, and he held perfectly still for a moment, but then his hand gently touched Nix's frills, stroking them with the back of his knuckles, before stroking across them with his palm. Nix murmured in pleasure and closed his eyes. Even if Winters hadn't been someone he had growing feelings for, it just felt so good to be touched again.

"Your family must miss you," Winters said.

Nix flinched, but made himself still again. "What makes you say that?"

Winters sounded abashed, but still said, "I don't know, you seem like someone people would miss." It was, Nix thought, the nicest thing anyone had said of him in a long time. The exact opposite of his father's sentiments, certainly. He didn't know how to tell Winters that he didn't think there was any truth to that, so kept his eyes closed and made a sound of sleepy indifference.

Thankfully, Winters left it at that and went back to his reading.

A few hours later, when Winters had concluded that there was nothing of note in the library and Nix had had a nice nap, they climbed to the top of the keep and sat side by side watching the land turn golden far below them. Nix wanted to look back over the savannah again, but Winters walked over to the far side of the flat roof and sat on the edge as though he didn't notice the drop below his kicking feet. If he fell, Nix didn't think he'd be able to stoop and dive fast enough to catch him before Winters' body smashed on the rocks far below.

Gingerly, Nix sat next to Winters on the edge of the roof. He let his tail fall down beside him twitching against the smooth golden stone of the keep, and spread his wings to catch the sun. "This is nice," he said, but Winters wasn't listening.

Instead he was staring down at the valley below, a shape Nix now knew from the maps he'd studied. The sun caught on a gleam of water as a river wound through purple and green hills almost too distant to see. Smudges of smoke blurred it in places, and Nix both wished he knew what that meant, and didn't want to know. Still, Winters cared enough to stare pensively into the distance, even though you could burn the whole valley down and barely tell what was happening, so Nix felt compelled to ask, "Did you hear how Speirs did this morning?"

"Oh, he did fine," Winters said, but from his and the way he shifted his weight on the cool stone, Nix knew that there was more to it than that.

"Anyone hurt?" he pressed. He could feel that Winters both did and did not want to tell him what was happening, and that drawing him out a little would be required. Consorts were supposed to be good at this sort of thing: the delicate art of conversation, influence though giving way, suggestion, being beautiful and vulnerable enough to trust.

"No," Winters said, amusement tinged his voice, but it was bitter. "No one was hurt. No one was there, either. We hit an empty camp."

Nix knew very little of the arts of war, but he assumed that finding the enemy was reasonably important. "Where were they?"

Winters shook his head and looked again to the smudges of smoke in the valley. "We don't know."

"Oh." That didn't sound good either.

Winters rubbed both hands over his face and sighed. "Not that there's anything I can do about it, even if we did know, not when I'm stuck here away from the fighting. Useless."

Nix thought about telling Winters that his role in Gale Iron was meant to be very similar to what Taylor expected of Winters when their visitors arrived, and that such duties were vital to the survival of the court. But Nix had always been so shit at that kind of thing, that he didn't want to live with the hypocrisy of holding himself up as a good example. Instead he shifted his butt closer to Winters, so that their arms pressed together, and again wrapped his wing around Winters shoulders.

"I like it when you do that," Winters said, and he sounded tired again. He'd only caught a few hours of sleep on the cot in the equipment room.

"We should go to bed," Nix said. He wasn't looking forward to Winters having to make some stupidly huge choice about whether or not sleeping next to Nix constituted some risk or breach in morals, or whatever was the matter with Winters, but this also really wasn't a good place to nap.

"No," Winters protested, like a fledgeling who wanted another story before the teachers turned the tucked them into their bowers. Indeed, Nix almost laughed when Winters said, "Tell me something, Nix."

"Tell you what?"

"It doesn't matter, just anything, tell me about your family, are you married? You said you had clutchmates, do you have a clutch?"

"I..." Nix stopped. The intrusiveness of the questions made him want to draw away, but that would mean leaving an exhausted Winters sitting on the edge of the roof with who knew how many paces of nothing below him. "Yeah," he said, finally. "I had a clutch. I went..." he didn't know how to explain how consorts left, were expected just to fit in with a new court, and the story around Carnelian was too complicated, and none of an outsider's business anyway. "I was with someone for a while, and we had a clutch but..." Nix swallowed. He'd never had to tell anyone this; the word had always spread before him like a cloud in front of the sun. "Only one lived. The other four." He shook his head. There was nothing to say about Carnelian in her bower holding the stillborn remains of her first clutch. Nix had only seen it for a moment, before the mentors hustled him away. He cleared his throat and said, "I have a son, but he'll stay with his mother's court. And I won't see him again." The Arbora would never want him to have another clutch, either. Nix was tainted, and would be removed from his court's bloodline, a failure just like his father had said.

"I'm sorry," Winters said, and he sounded like he meant it.

Nix sighed. He hadn't meant to make Winters pity him, or maybe he had. He couldn't tell what he wanted any more, other than not to feel the shame of how he'd let down two courts and had no place left in the world. "I'd just been sent home," he continued, figuring he'd get the whole thing out of the way at once, "got in a huge fight with my father, and went flying to clear my head. Then Speirs shot me, and now I've met you."

Winters tipped his head to the side to rest it on Nix's shoulder. "And I thought I was having a bad season."

"Yeah, well." Nix huffed out a breath. "I felt as though I needed to excel in at least one area."

"So you picked..." Winters didn't say what, but Nix felt his mouth twitch against his scales, and smiled in return.

"Had to be something," Nix answered, but also didn't elaborate. He moved his hand so that he was holding Winters around the waist, and was pleased when he didn't flinch away or object. Nix hadn't told his story to make pretty groundlings be nice to him, but if that was the result, he wasn't going to argue with it either.

"What are you going to do when you get home?" Winters asked. He sounded concerned, as if his own family wasn't displaced, and his people weren't at war, and the social fate of a near stranger ranked highest in his worries.

"Oh, they'll find something for me," Nix answered. "At least I'm still decorative, and that's half the point."

Winters wrapped his arm around Nix's shoulders, just below his wings, and said nothing. Nix figured that was what could be best said about the whole thing.

"Who knows," Nix added, "Maybe I'll just stay here. The general seemed to think he could use me in a fight."

"You ever been in a fight?" Winters asked, sounding sceptical. His impression that Nix was a ferocious hunter who ruled the skies seemed to have fallen away, presumably in the face of Nix having opened his mouth.

Nix snorted. "How hard can it be? I'd just fly along and drop you on the enemy, right?"

"That's about it," Winters answered. He considered for a moment, then added. "I wish I could fly like you though. Not because of the war, just... I, uh, I guess I think I'd like it."

"I'll take you some time," Nix promised. "When my wing's better, I should be able to carry you. It wouldn't be the same, as flying yourself, but..."

"We'll see," Winters answered.

Nix thought for a moment about just staying here. Really, how much would they miss him at Gale Iron? After a cursory search, Diamond might have just written him off as lost, and been silently relieved that he wouldn't be burdening her court any more. But other than being able to speak three languages and perform a flawless tea ceremony, Nix wasn't sure what he could offer to the Toccoans either. Here, as well as at home, he'd mostly been decorative. He certainly didn't think that rebuilding farmland would turn out to be his area of expertise, which is likely what everyone else was going to spend the rest of their lives doing, and he really would be miserable in a fight.

"Hey, maybe I could take you back to my court," Nix said out of the blue, and was oddly disappointed when Winters laughed. He'd been half serious. Taylor did want to build trade relations, and they were something close to neighbours, Gale Iron and Fortress Currahee.

"I don't think I'd be very good at being decorative," Winters said just before the bell for the evening meal sounded.

"Don't sell yourself short," Nix told him as they started back down the stairs to the eating hall. "It could be you'd excel." He patted Winters' ass as he proceeded Nix down a narrow passageway, and the glance Winters threw over his shoulder contained a sly smile that belied his pretended indignation.

Nix felt a warmth of fondness in his chest that he hadn't for a long time, maybe not since the last time he and Blanche had really had time to talk. It wasn't just that he wanted to get Winters into bed with him, which he did, but Nix also liked him. He hadn't expected that.

He hadn't expected Winters to want to share the meal with the kid who'd been working in the equipment room while he slept, who Nix learned was called Garcia. He didn't look any less awed by Winters now that he was shovelling food into his face than he had when he was sleeping. Sitting next to someone who had wings and scales seemed to intimidate him less.

"You heard from your ma?" Winters asked, and got a slight, wide-eyed nod in reply. "Garcia's family are farmers along the south border. So far their lands have been safe, but Garcia volunteered to come up and help defend our land," Winters explained to Nix, as if he cared. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't just talking for Nix's benefit. Garcia's chest puffed out at the praise and his skin darkened.

"Captain Winters hasn't let me fight, yet," he told Nix, "but I'm getting my wings soon."

Nix hoped that the fighting was over before this kid ever flung himself from a wind-ship into combat below. "Sure," he said, and glanced at Winters, who twitched his mouth up in acknowledgement that the enthusiasm was both real and overly earnest. Nix smiled back at him unabashedly.

After a meal wasn't the best time to test out his wings, but Nix couldn't stand not knowing any more, so he followed Winters out into something normally used for fighting practice, a square of about ten wing-spans floored with sand. Winters sat on one of the low benches against the wall as Nix paced back and forth across the yard. Eventually he backed up to one corner, took two running steps and leaped into the air, flapping his wings in great sweeping strokes for lift. The still air of the yard did him no favours, but he still had enough room to leave the ground before he ran into the far wall. Nix wheeled inside the space until he got as high as to top of the parapet, then grabbed on with both feet and hands and clung there for a moment. His wing burned, but didn't feel like it had been injured, just forced to work. All the sleep Nix had got must have been doing it some good. He looked down, and saw Winters with his face turned up towards him, teeth flashing as he laughed. Nix knew that he definitely shouldn't try to pick up a groundling yet, but the urge to swoop down and catch Winters up in his arms made Nix wonder how queens felt when they'd chosen a consort.

Letting go of the parapet, Nix spread his wings to spiral down into the centre of the yard, one wing dipped as he twirled in like a seed pod. He knew it was showy nonsense, but it felt so good to be able to stretch properly, and besides, Winters was watching.

Nix scooped his wings to drop speed, kicking up a cloud of sand in the centre of the yard, hovered for a moment, then dropped to the ground as light as a feather. Rolling his shoulders, he tested his muscles one by one and concluded that he hadn't done any harm, other than now being covered in grime from the dirt he'd washed up.

Winters got up and looked like he was going to limp over, so Nix crossed to him first, immensely satisfied by the impressed look on Winters' face.

"You've got to take me up, sometime, big guy," Winters said, and laughed at how silly that sounded.

They grinned at each other, and from there it was the most natural thing in the world to pull Winters into an embrace. Winters didn't resist, but wrapped his arms around Nix's waist and tipped his head back so that he could look Nix in the face. Winters parted his lips and leaned up towards Nix, then stopped when their mouths were a hand-span apart. Nix could smell his breath, yeasty with bread and that mulled drink they loved here. This close, Winters' skin was covered in little dots across his cheekbones. Nix raised his hand and brushed the backs of his claws across them, making Winters shiver.

Not looking away from Nix's eyes, Winters tipped his head to one side, licked his lips, and parted them again, like he was about to say something, but didn't know what. Their chests were pressed so tightly together that Nix could feel the pounding of Winters' heart. His face had flushed darker and the pupils of his eyes had expanded, turning the colour from rain grey to a dark blue. He was stunning like this, and Nix wanted so badly to have sex with him, right there in the yard if need be, but wasn't entirely sure how to proceed. It seemed as though Winters expected something from him that Nix wasn't providing, and asking would likely embarrass him.

Wanting to be sure, Nix leaned in and nipped the side of Winters' neck, right below the ear. He'd been careful not to break the skin, but even so Winters yelped and pulled away, hand going to cover the injury.

"What was that for?" he demanded, glaring up at Nix.

That had been stupid. "I just wanted to make sure," Nix said, knowing that explained nothing at all.

"Sure of what?" Winters demanded, but shook his head before taking another step back. That ran his calves into the bench behind him, and he sat down with a thump. Now the colour in his face didn't seem likely to be from arousal. Nix wasn't sure how they'd gone wrong, but he wasn't going to let things get any worse before he said something about it.

Dropping to his haunches in front of Winters, he looked up at him carefully, noticing the flush of colour and sheen of perspiration on his face. Nix had slept around as much as the next Raksura, both in his home court and at Star Aster, but he'd never been with someone from another species before. He didn't know how this was supposed to go, and he was beginning to suspect that Winters didn't either. Maybe that was why he wouldn't sleep next to Nix, why he'd seemed to wait for Nix to take the lead.

It seemed to Nix that it would be a good idea if they were clear about what they were trying to do, before sorting out the details. "I think you're very pretty, and I want to have sex with you, Winters," Nix said.

Winters slumped forward, burying his face in his hands. He made an inarticulate sound that Nix read as an indication of distress, and backed away a little. Attempting to clarify the situation, it seemed, had not been a good choice.

Nix had to admit that stung. He'd thought he and Winters were getting along pretty well. Had Winters been Raksura, they'd have had sex the night before, and called that that. Nix had heard that other species spent much more time and effort agonising over who was allowed to have sex with whom, but he hadn't quite believed it until now. Why bother? What in the Three Worlds was the point?

However much of a stick in the mud Winters was turning out to be, Nix was risking the only friend he had in Currahee by messing this up. "I'm sorry," he said slowly, trying to think what to say. "I didn't understand. I thought you were interested."

Winters groaned, but dropped his hands so that he could look at Nix. His skin had become pale, and Nix really needed a guide for what these colour changing groundlings meant. "No." Winters was speaking just as deliberately as Nix. Was he scared too? "No. You, uh, you're right, Nix. I am interested. I guess I'm just not very good at this kind of thing." He tried to smile, but his face seemed frozen in embarrassment, and his lips only twitched up briefly before flattening into a thin, miserable line.

Nix hadn't meant to hurt him. He reached out and put his hand on Winters' knee. "Well, it just so happens that this is another area in which I happen to excel."

"That so?" Winters smile looked a little more genuine this time.

"Yeah, yeah it is," Nix told him. He waited for Winters to put his hand over Nix's on his knee. "In fact, if you wanted someone to show you the ropes, you couldn't have happened across a more highly qualified expert."

It was big talk for someone who wasn't sure his potential partner's pleasure worked the same way his did, or if his partner knew either, but Nix had faith in his ability to improvise.

Winters sighed and dipped his head so that he could see Nix's face more clearly. "I am interested," he said again, but his need to make the point clear didn't sound promising. "I'd like to take it slow, huh?"

"So we should go back to your room?" Nix asked. He supposed that was better than getting carried away in the yard.

"No." Again that care in Winters' tone. "Why don't you go up, and I'll sleep in the tack room?"

"Oh," Nix said, spines flattening in disappointment. "You're not kidding."

"Sorry," Winters said, and he sounded like he actually _was_ sorry, which just made it worse.

"Yeah, all right." Nix stood, turning away. At least he didn't change colour with emotions, and Winters didn't seem to know how to read the position of his spines, but his facial expressions were similar enough to give him away. He didn't want Winters to think he wasn't good enough just because he wasn't doing what Nix wanted.

Oh, but Nix wanted him so very badly. He wanted anyone he could get at this point, just from the pure loneliness of the last ten days. He probably wouldn't have kicked Speirs out of his bower, but most of all he wanted Winters, and he'd been so sure that he was going to get to be with him. He might even have shown him his groundling form just to make things easier.

Now, Nix was not only going to be sleeping alone again, he was ejecting Winters from his own room, making him sleep on a pallet that was, now that Nix thought of it, probably young Garcia's. Would Winters share with _him_? Was Nix upset that he might?

"All right, fine," Nix muttered, knowing how petulant he sounded, but not able to stop himself. Without looking back, he left the yard, got briefly lost in the keep's twisting hallways, until he eventually found his way back to Winters' room. Darkness had fallen then, but Nix's night vision let him see the imprint he'd left in the sleeping mat that morning, the one he never seemed like he was going to get to share with anyone.

All at once, Nix felt immensely tired, and his wing ached from showing off earlier, and he just wanted to go home and let the Arbora feed him tea and tell him things were going to be okay. He was so tired of messing things up.

Nix curled up on the mats and tried to focus on the scent of the herbs and grasses of the savannah, not the lingering smell of groundlings, one in particular, clinging to the fabric.


	5. Chapter Five

Nix rose early the next day—or early for him, as the sun was well over Currahee's walls and the keep was bustling by the time he made his way down to the eating hall. There he found Garcia but not Winters.

"He's got some meeting with Captain Dike," Garcia explained around a mouthful of boiled grain. "Left early."

That had been the leader of the wind-ship with the new visitors, the potential allies. Winters would likely spend the day limping around the castle showing this Golden Islander the best side of Currahee he could find. That was doubtful to include an accidentally kidnapped foreigner, no matter how decorative, so Nix sighed and wrote the day off. From what he'd seen of Winters' temperament, it didn't seem likely that after a day of playing nice with visitors, that he'd be in any kind of good mood that evening.

"Did he put you out of a bed?" Nix asked. Now that he looked at Garcia, his skin appeared a little grey and he kept yawning.

"No, I had watch on the walls all night," Garcia mumbled, mouth still full of food. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his fist, looking even more like a fledgling than he usually did. "Captain Winters is letting me start as a sentry now!"

Nix felt as though that were way too much enthusiasm for a job that almost certainly involved standing on a castle wall in the cold, staring into the dark and hoping you didn't see anything. However, he nodded like he was happy for the kid, and wondered again how well watched Currahee was. It was meant to be a stronghold, clearly, but that implied an expectation of—and preparation—for being attacked, and that wasn't something Nix had seen many signs of.

Garcia stumbled off to bed not long after, and Nix went back up to the castle walls. He had been thinking about how near that river looked, but also about the smudge on the horizon in the direction of home, and how really Gale Iron wasn't that far away from a war zone it seemed to know nothing about. It was time, Nix thought, to take a bit of a look around.

Emboldened by his success the day before, Nix leaped off the edge of the castle's outer wall, eliciting a gasp from a nearby sentry. Air cracked against his wings as he snapped them open, then used the air current up the cliff to gain elevation. Before long, Nix was circling above Currahee, only having to adjust his wings a little as the air carried him higher and higher. From there, he could definitely tell that the far-distant smudge was the trailing edge of the escarpment home of Gale Iron, but couldn't make out much other detail. There was nothing between but an expanse of rolling grassland. Opposite, below Currahee, spread the valley. From up here, he could see that last night's fires were out, and the smoke had dissipated. He thought he could make out the specks of wind-ships down by the river, but couldn't tell for sure. He thought that if Winters were here, he'd be able to tell. Winters had the experience to see small details and put them together into a story in a way that Nix, unfamiliar with military movements, could not.

Nix wondered what it would be like to fly down there and see for himself. He could stay up out of arrow range, and then come back and tell Winters what he'd seen. Having someone who could fly farther and faster than the wind-ships, who was manoeuvrable and hard to see, that had to be of some use, didn't it? He could earn his keep doing that, so long as the war lasted, maybe even after.

Nix had no idea why he was even thinking about all this. He would only be there a few more days before he started the flight home to Gale Iron and his family. As useful as he could be here, as pretty as Winters was, and as nice as he felt to hold, he wasn't a Raksura, and he would never really understand Nix. The idea of spending his whole life among strangers speaking a strange language was too difficult to contemplate. Nix wouldn't survive that. He would make himself a solitary, an outcast with no status and no court.

At least if he went home, his family would be there, and they'd find something to do with him. He could go down and play with the fledglings, and take as many lovers as he liked among the warriors and Arbora, even if there could be no chance of a clutch. Nix would be able to join in the evening songs, and get a decent cup of tea, and his favourite foods. All of that was of more worth than a passing fantasy of making Winters eyes light in admiration as they had before.

Nix started to descend, sliding between the currents of air rising off the cliffs and folding his wings to drop towards the parapets of Currahee. A single wind-ship was moored near one of the big wooden cranes. As Nix got closer, he could see a group of groundlings gathered around the side of it. Winters' hair gleamed like a cut gem in the morning sun. Nix thought about tucking his wings against his sides and stooping down to come to a sweeping dramatic landing on the rail of the wind-ship. It would be satisfying to watch them all gawp at him, especially Taylor. However, Nix wasn't sure his wing could take the snap of air required to slow him that abruptly, and besides he didn't want to show off quite how agile he could be. For that matter, he didn't want to get Winters in trouble for showing off in front of a guest. He had the impression that it would be better if he steered clear of the guest entirely.

Instead of falling upon the delegation, Nix glided down to a far corner, employing a much more modest angle of approach. There he folded his wings and strolled back down to the courtyard below. He could hear raised voices and exclamations from the other side of the keep, so he must have made some impression with just his appearance. Smiling in satisfaction, Nix deliberately didn't look up at the ruckus he'd caused. Let Taylor explain Nix, if he could think how.

From the shortening shadows, it was about mid-morning. Nix decided that he would go watch the birds in the menagerie for a bit, then maybe fly up to the top of the keep and spread his wings out so that he could nap while basking in the sun. He'd call it healing sleep, or something, rather than pure laziness and boredom.

Nix had gotten as far as the door of his old cage when he saw Winters limping across to meet him. He was wearing some kind of pressed green wool outfit that Nix hadn't seen before. It made his legs look longer and pinched in his waist with a belt, and though the dull green wasn't a good colour on anyone, Winters' hair shone in contrast. Nix made a point of looking him over, and then smiled at Winters.

"Thought I'd lost you for the day," he said, then stopped.

Winters wasn't smiling back. Instead, his mouth was pressed into such a tight line that his lips disappeared, and his jaw kept twitching. He had one hand on the hilt of a blade stuck through his belt, and the other clenched behind his back.

"Is something wrong?" Nix asked. He stepped away from the cages, wanting to give himself space to jump clear if things started to go wrong. He didn't like how controlled and careful Winters was all of a sudden. He didn't like how Winters was looking at him with the blank expression he reserved for Taylor when he didn't like his orders.

"I—" Winters stopped more than two paces away from Nix. His shoulders were square and his posture straight as a new sapling in full sun. He had his full weight on his bad ankle, but wasn't flinching from that. "Nix," Winters started again, but that didn't seem to be the right way either. The hand clenching the hilt of the blade tightened, his leather glove creaking. Finally, the words tumbled out of Winters in a rush. "You need to go back in the cage. Nix, please. There have been questions, and... it's not... it's not good. I can't protect you unless you're in the cage."

"What?" Nix demanded flatly, and took another step back. He could envision no way that being inside the cage would protect him. He tried to sort through Winters' hurried speech, but it wasn't making any sense. "What questions?"

Winters took a step closer, and Nix hissed and backed away again, frills raised and tail lashing. "Nix, listen to me," Winters pleaded. "There are archers on the walls. If you don't go back into that cage and let me lock the door, they will shoot you. Do you understand? Please, it was all I could do to convince the General to let me come down here and ask you."

Nix cocked his head to take in the walls around the menagerie. He could see silhouettes of men with raised bows on three sides of him. For a moment, he thought of leaping into the sky, maybe catching up Winters as he went, but he remembered the pain of Speirs' arrows in his chest and in his wing, and he flinched back from it. They would kill him. They'd probably kill Winters too, and Nix didn't want either. He'd been too close to death already.

Flattening his spines down his back and lowering to a half crouch, he looked at Winters appealingly. "Winters, please, tell me what's going on."

Winters only shook his head, mute, almost as helpless as Nix. His face was hard and unyielding, but Nix thought he saw desperation in Winters' eyes. They really were going to kill Nix, and soon.

"Shit," Nix muttered and slunk back into the cage that had been his for that long, miserable captivity. The stench of it rose up to greet him, but he kept going until he reached the farthest corner from the door. The blanket Winters had given him was no longer there. Only after he heard the lock click shut did Nix turn. Winters was still standing with his hand on the door, and if Nix rushed, he'd at least be able to knock him back on his ass like he had the first time, if not take him hostage. Not that Taylor would care if Nix killed one of his captains. If he cared, he would have simply shot Nix, instead of sending Winters down in the first place.

Reluctantly, Winters stepped back, one pace and then two, until he was out of Nix's reach. "You've been lying to us," he said.

Nix tried to think back over everything he'd said in the last day, but the shock of what was happening must have been getting to him, because his thoughts kept jittering and wouldn't fall into any kind of order. He didn't think he'd lied, but he had certainly elided the truth occasionally. Had they found out how valuable a consort would be to his home court? Was this a ransom? If so, had threatening to shoot him been a bluff? Had it been one Winters had believed?

"What's going on?" Nix said again, but Winters shook his head and turned away. His job done, he walked heavily now, the limp showing through his pride. Nix bounded forward to the bars, and yelled after Winters, but he didn't stop. He didn't even flinch.

In the cage beside Nix, the birds set off a raucous chorus of echoes around his shouts. Nix slammed his hands against the bars and rattled the door as hard as he could, but it didn't give any more than it had any of the other times he'd tried.

"Shit," Nix muttered again. He flipped over and climbed across the top of the cage, but that gave no more than it had the first ten times. Besides which, if Nix could get out, the archers were still on the walls. He dropped back to the floor of the cage and folded his arms, staring out across the menagerie. If Winters was the messenger, then Taylor would show up eventually.

Probably, or he'd order Nix shot while he was safely confined to his cage, unable to even attempt to fight for his life. Had that been what Winters was doing? Turning a chance of escape into a surety of death? Nix had never doubted that when it came to loyalty, Currahee was first in Winters' heart, but he hadn't imagined that he cared so little for Nix.

Just the night before, they'd embraced, and Winters had looked up at Nix with the kind of glowing affection that Nix had...

Nix wanted to hiss and pace, wanted to scream and tear the place apart, but he had room to do neither here. All he could do was wait and see what judgement Taylor might pass, what lies he was accused of telling. Honestly, Nix really couldn't think of what he could have said that would be bad enough to have him locked away like this. All he'd done since he'd been set free was wander around in the castle and make a few friends. He'd flirted with Winters, certainly, but that hadn't seemed to be illegal in the eyes of Currahee. At least if it was, no one had told him so, and Winters had given no indication that what they'd been doing had been in conflict with his duty, though his sense of propriety had seemed offended.

Nix did pace, in the end, twice back and forth across the cage, before settling into a crouch with his back to the stunted tree. He wished that he had something to do. How had he managed all those long hours of boredom before? It seemed impossible.

Fear churned in Nix's stomach like it hadn't since he'd first been captured. These last span of days, he'd thought he could wait this out, escape somehow, and fly away. Now they wanted to kill him, and he didn't know why.

After all the screw ups and ill chance of Nix's life, he could be butchered in a cage and it would be over a misunderstanding. When Nix thought about it like that, it was almost perfect. What ending was more probable for him than something profoundly stupid?

Hearing the scuff of boots on stone, Nix turned and watched as Taylor arrived with his usual entourage, plus Winters and a strange groundling that Nix assumed was the Golden Islander. Slender, and robed in a blue that was shockingly bright against the drab clothes of the Toccoans, she had golden skin and perfectly white hair done up in braids, but what struck Nix most was the expression of terror on her face when she saw him. She was looking at him—a total stranger, and one locked in a cage—with the panicky eye of a grasseater with its leg caught in a hunter's trap.

It was in that moment that Nix started to get a sinking feeling about what the nature of the misunderstanding was. "I'm not a Fell," he said as soon as they were close enough to hear.

"Fell lie," the Islander replied just as fast.

Nix could see how this argument wasn't going to go well. He tried another tack. "If I were a Fell, I would have already called my flight, and eaten everyone here."

"Maybe you were waiting until you were stronger," Taylor said. For someone who hadn't known what a Fell was when he got up that morning, the man seemed to be taking to the idea very quickly. He had not liked being lied to, or tricked, or exposed in a mistake. He would much rather have correctly caged an invidious deceiver, than have mistakenly caged an innocent.

"I'm not a Fell," Nix said again, even though he knew that it was as pointless as it had been the first time. "My people and the Fell had the same ancestors. We're similar, but we are not the same. We don't..." Nix struggled trying to begin to tell the differences between the Raksura and their mortal enemy. He was insulted they thought he smelled that bad, for one, but the main difference, in the end was fairly simple. "We don't eat people."

The Islander had her jaw set and even though her eyes were still wide with fear, Nix could tell she wouldn't give an inch. "My people have travelled all over the Three Worlds," she said. "We're explorers and researchers, and we've talked to hundreds of different peoples. We have heard of how the Fell send their Harbingers into cities to charm their peoples, to lie, to lay the ground for an attack, and when the time comes they smile as they eat the leaders' children in front of them. We have never heard of a people that look like the Fell yet are harmless."

"We keep to ourselves," Nix protested, rather pathetically. Frankly, if he were Taylor, he would have shot the being in the cage already. Anyone who got close enough to a Fell to tell the differences between a Fell ruler and a Raksuran consort was too close to a Fell, and probably wouldn't live long after that. "I don't know what to say. I've never meant any of you any harm, not even when you had me locked up. I could have killed Winters just now, and probably escaped. I could have flown off this morning. I trusted that Currahee's hospitality was good."

That last he said to Taylor, who just set his jaw and kept looking steadily at Nix as if he expected him to grow even larger fangs and rip through the metal bars at any moment. So much for playing on guilt and the laws of hospitality. Those, rightly, did not apply to the Fell.

"It's not safe to talk to it," the Islander said. "The Fell can get into your head, convince you what they're saying is true, even make you feel things you wouldn't normally feel. It's only going to lie more anyway."

Nix had been looking at Winters when she said that, and saw his already pale face get an ashy tinge to it, as though his heart had stopped pumping blood. His mouth opened, but no words came out. He almost looked as he had the night before, when he'd parted his lips while leaning up towards Nix's face, only a ghastly mirror of that.

Unthinkingly, Nix surged forward to press against the bars of the cage, crying, "Winters, no, it wasn't like that."

Everyone started and took a step back at his sudden movement, save for Winters who seemed rooted in place. It ended with him standing closest to Nix, still looking at him with wide-eyed horror. No, not horror, betrayal.

Nix dropped back away from the bars, but by then Taylor was already looking at Winters with dark speculation in his eyes. He probably assumed that Nix had seduced Winters into bed. He certainly had been trying.

Now was not the time to say, "If I were an amoral monster with mind control powers, I would have made you have sex with me last night," but that didn't stop Nix from thinking it. That was, he was sure, the difference between Fell rulers and Raksuran queens: one would use their powers to any advantage whatsoever, no matter who it hurt, and the other would only act to look after her people and protect her court.

The Islander however wasn't going to be distracted by Currahee's internal dramas. "Did it even tell you it could change shape?" she demanded.

 _Shit,_ Nix thought, but managed not to say out loud. Of course he hadn't mentioned that, and that had been because he didn't trust Taylor. That had paid off nicely.

"It can what?" Taylor demanded, and the Islander was only too happy to explain that Fell rulers had the forms of beautiful young men, which they used to lure and seduce groundling courts. Winters managed to fade back among the others as she was talking, but Taylor watched Nix with an unflinching assessment, and almost for the first time Nix could picture him leading men into combat. "Show me," Taylor demanded of Nix.

Of course for all his fierceness, Taylor was no Raksuran queen who could force her court to shift into their groundling forms and keep them there. Taylor's hand raised to signal the archers had the same effect, in the end. Nix supposed there might be some value in trying to brazen it out, but maybe lying to cover the fact that he'd already been eluding the truth wasn't going to help.

If it hadn't been for the arrows levelled at his chest, and the groundlings—and Winters especially—staring at him in aghast horror, it would have been a relief to shift. Nix had spent too long in his Aeriat form, and he could feel reviving energy flow through him as the world blurred, and he dropped into his groundling form. His body grew heavier as his bones thickened, but he lost a head of height, levelling out to a little under Winters' height, and much of the extra muscle around his chest and shoulders fell away. His spines, fills and wings vanished along with his tail, and his face altered and smoothed away from his powerful, ripping jaws. As he shifted, he used the small magic all Raksura possessed to summon his clothes around himself, so that when the blur of the shift faded, he was fully dressed save for shoes. In the end, he stood there a simple groundling with a mop of black hair and soft, light-coloured skin instead of scales. If he could have changed from his jewelled court tunic into the groundlings' drab clothes, he would have blended in with the Toccoans, save for his pointed ears and sharp teeth.

Still in the centre of the cage, Nix spread his arms, revealing a body even more vulnerable to Taylor's archers than before. He deliberately didn't look at Winters.

"Fine," he said, giving up on diplomacy. His voice was lighter and sweeter in this form, lacking the rumble of an Aeriat. "Yes. All right. I lied to you. You also shot me, and kept me in a _cage_ for six days, and I had no reason to trust you with the truth. That makes me cautious, not about to eat you."

Taylor shook his head, liking this latest development even less than finding out that Nix wasn't just a pretty skyling pet. His eyes travelled over Nix's body with deeply-held scepticism. Nix thought that at least the richness of his dress would make him seem just valuable, or implausibly wealthy. Now shifted, he was wearing pants and a tunic dyed a midnight blue and embroidered over with black and silver flowers. Star Aster had sent him packing wearing the best their Arbora could make, a no-longer wanted gift returned in better condition than it had been given. Even without the collar that Speirs had stolen, it was an impressive display. Taylor looked from Nix to the Golden Islander, to Winters, and back to Nix before saying, "If he wasn't able to get out of the cage before, he won't be able to now. Keep the archers on the walls, and no one else goes near until we decide what to do with him."

With that, he turned on his heel and marched away. Winters lingered for a moment, and Nix crossed back to the bars, remembering how close they'd been before Winters had released him the first time, the brush of Winters' fingers on his throat as he'd unlocked Nix's chains. If Nix had shown his other form then, would they be standing on opposite sides of the bars now? Probably, Nix concluded. He still didn't have an argument against the Golden Islander's claims. If Nix were a Fell, they should have killed him already and buried his severed head in salt for good measure.

"Winters," Nix said again, plaintively this time. He knew that he looked next to helpless in his groundling form, and knew that Winters knew it too, and probably thought Nix was manipulating him. He shifted again, taking on wings and scales and disembowelling claws.

Winters watched with fascination, even opened his mouth to ask a question, but then shut it and shook his head slightly. He turned away from Nix without a word. The last thing he'd said had been to tell Nix to get into the cage, it was probably the last thing Winters would ever say to Nix. If he had a hair's worth of self-preservation, Winters would put as much distance between himself and Nix as possible. He would be questionable now, suspected of Fell influence upon his thoughts.

Which was nothing compared to Nix's problems. Once Taylor worked up the will to do it, Nix was going to be dead.

* * *

The animals had already been fed that morning, and forwent the noon feeding. When the caretakers came by that evening, they were accompanied by archers and kept the widest possible birth around Nix. They didn't bother feeding slop and offal to Nix, which didn't seem like a good sign to him.

He tried rattling the bars and demanding to speak to General Taylor, and was entirely ignored. That, if nothing else, ought to have proved that he was not a Fell ruler. If Nix had the power to influence minds, he definitely would have picked this as a good time to use it.

As dusk settled over Currahee, Nix started to wonder if there might be some hope after all. If Taylor believed the Golden Islander without condition, he would have killed Nix by now, which meant that he was a man who wanted to keep his options open. He must remember that Nix had talked about opening diplomatic ties with his own people. Maybe he didn't believe that the best action was to kill Nix right away and risk closing off that possibility, or worse angering Nix's mother.

If Nix got to talk to Taylor again, he would tell him...

Nix realised that he was pacing and made himself still. He wasn't going to tell Taylor that he was so important that the entirety of Gale Iron would descend upon his head if he should harm Nix. After having held Nix in captivity for so long, he had to know the emptiness of that threat, and even if he didn't, that wasn't something Nix would want. He thought about Blanche and her warriors falling on Currahee's archers, and shuddered at the idea. Young Garcia would be up there on the walls, and probably Winters as well.

Winters hadn't even done anything wrong except befriend Nix. For the first time, it occurred to Nix that most of the groundlings fighting in the valley hadn't done much besides do as they were told.

Darkness filled the courtyard, and Nix jumped to the top of the cage, again trying to pry a space between the bars and the back wall. There were still archers on the walls, but they didn't have much chance of hitting him in the dark. If he could get out, even as tired and hungry as he was, he could fly far enough to get away. He'd just head towards home and fly until he had to stop.

Too bad even wrapping his arms around a bar and using his legs as a lever against the wall didn't budge anything enough to wriggle through.

Swearing and frustrated, Nix dropped back to the floor of the cage. The thud of impact woke the birds, which chirped at him irritably. Nix hissed at them in reply and they flocked to a branch on the far side of their cage. Great, Nix could now terrify creatures the size of his hand. That was going to help. Too bad they weren't smart enough to talk to, he could try to get one out and tell it to go fetch the keys.

That kind of thing always worked in songs, anyway.

Nix sat on the ground, pulling his knees against his chest, and thought back to the joy and admiration that had been in Winters' eyes just the night before. His skin had been so warm against Nix's. More than that, when Nix had told him about Carnelian and Mica, Winters had spoken softly to him, touched him with more care and compassion than Nix had thought he'd deserved before that.

He'd even been thinking about staying here, so that he could be with someone who was kind and saw Nix as something other than a burden and a failure.

His father would say that this was why you never trusted outsiders, why a court's greatest punishment for misbehaviour was exile, forcing someone to live in a world where they could never speak their own language, never know true acceptance again. As with most things Hope said, Nix didn't know if that was true. Rather, he knew that the loneliness of being a solitary was real. He'd felt it himself since he'd left Gale Iron on his botched hunting trip, but he didn't know if it was truly impossible to ever trust an outsider.

Was this how it would always be between Raksura and other races? Would there always be this suspicion and betrayal?

Nix wished he could tell his longing for companionship apart from his growing affection for Winters, or if any of his feelings at all made the least amount of sense.

Mostly, he knew that he was hungry, tired and afraid, and that seeing Winters again probably wouldn't fix any of those things.

Since it seemed as though Taylor was going to wait until the morning, at least, to decide what to do with Nix, he curled up on the cold, bare floor of the cage and tried to sleep.

He must have drifted off, because he woke later with his spines twitching and his claws digging into the stone under him.

In the cage beside him, the birds chirped nervously, then went still.

Nix pushed himself up to his haunches and peered at the night sky above him. It had clouded over after dark, a low overcast almost clinging to the top of the keep. Nix could hear the creak of Captain Dike's wind-ship rocking against its moorings on the wall above. Something felt wrong, but Nix couldn't say what. He climbed to the top of the cage and clung upside down from the bars, straining his ears against the stillness of the castle.

He heard running boots on the walls, a muffled cry, a thud, more footsteps. Nix's spines rose, and he dropped lightly to the ground, crouching as if he would be able to fight.

Then, the world flared red, and fire started to rain down from the sky. It came all at once: balls of flames dropped out of the clouds and exploded in the castle's yards and closes. They burst outward as they hit the ground, spreading sticky flame to all sides. The caged animals started to scream either from terror or the spread of the flames. At least the stone and metal of the menagerie wasn't offering it much fuel, not like the wooden sheds built against the keep. Flames were already creeping up the walls. Black, choking smoke filled Nix's nose and mouth.

The bell that usually signalled meals began to sound, clanging over the explosions and the screams of the trapped animals. The clanging expanded to the clash of blades as groundlings started to skirmish along the walls, and Nix heard the shouts of wounded men.

The climbing flames lit the bellies of the clouds, and Nix finally saw the wind-ships lowering through them. They had a different shape to them than the Toccoan wind-ships, blunt nosed and boxy. Figures dropped from their side of one, sliding down ropes and landing on the top of the walls, despite the arrows rising from the defenders there. The other drifted across the castle grounds, continuing to drop fire as it went.

The war had come to Currahee, and Nix was stuck in a cage smack in the middle of it. Despite knowing that it would be no help whatsoever, he again leaped to the bars and yanked at them, trying to pull them out of shape. The birds next to him screeched in terror, adding frenzy to Nix's movements. No matter how hard he strained, his palms slipping on slick metal, the bars didn't budge.

He tried the lock on the cage door again, extending a claw and trying to mimic movements Winters had made with his thin knife. He found what he thought was the mechanism and pressed against it, but it didn't budge. He pressed harder, trying to force it, and his claw snapped clean in half. Nix swore, sucking at his finger. The sharp taste of his own blood filled his mouth.

He'd been so casual about being useful in a fight, but even if he weren't locked up in here, he didn't think that he'd be able to do much against the volleys of fire balls and groundlings with sharp steel. Was this what Winters’ world had been like for four turns now? He'd said he'd jumped from those ships, dropping like the fire onto the enemies below. Nix didn't know where he was now; was he one of the archers on walls or on the roof of the keep, or among the groundlings fighting at close quarters along the walls? Was he even still alive? Nix tried not to picture Winters burned by the sticking fire or run through with one of the attackers' steel blades. The attackers had taken the walls first, and were bombarding the centre of the castle as they held the parameter, like they were rounding up a herd of grasseaters.

Taylor hadn't had a whiff this was coming, and nothing in the castle had been prepared for a battle. What, Nix wondered, would happen to him if Currahee fell into the hands of the attackers? Would they treat him as an animal, as a Fell, or as a person worth releasing?

If Nix had been the kind of pragmatist he ought to be, he'd sit back against the wall in as much of the shadow of the scrawny tree as he could manage, and deal with whoever won the fight. As long as none of the fire spread to his cage, he would be fine. He could go back to pretending to be mindless and docile, if need be. He'd waited this long.

It didn't matter to him, who won, really. It would be better if the Toccoans lost.

Winters said they'd burned out his family's farm, that they'd burned food, and salted the earth as a means of war. Winters had spoken of that as if it were a thing that his people would never do.

The castle was full of the injured and the young, not soldiers. The soldiers were all off trying to find the last cluster of enemy troops, running in a wild chase down in the valley. The enemy that Taylor had said was all but finished, and, it turned out, was vicious in its desperation. What would they do if they took the castle? Nix couldn't see the people Winters had described as having much mercy on its inhabitants, especially not enemy soldiers.

And then what? After that, would it just be another fight as Speirs' men came back and retook the castle? Would the battle rage back and forth over the same ground until, like Winters' farm, there was nothing left of it? And what of Nix after that?

Nix had been a fool that morning. He'd been free in the sky and he could have flown away. Now he was trapped, and he couldn't see the dawn finding him well, no matter what happened.

The second wind-ship drifted directly over Nix, and now it was close enough that he could see figures leaning over the rails, dropping dark objects. They caught fire halfway down. Nix was so fascinated by the process that he didn't realise that one was going to land next to his cage until it was almost to the ground. He turned to face the wall, flaring his spines out to shield his back and curling his wings around in front of him. The birds in the cage next to him started to scream, and he cringed, tensing his body in expectation of pain. Nix had never done well with pain.

A wave of heat washed off the exploding projectile, singing the edges of the delicate folds of Nix's wings, pushing him back against the wall. Nix tucked more tightly in on himself, and squeezed his eyes shut. He wished he could block out the cries of the birds, too, and the other animals across the menagerie.

Pain splattered across his back, and he knew he was burning. The stench of it filled the air. Panicking, he tried to climb up the wall, not knowing where he was trying to go, just that it had to be away from here. He had to get out. He didn't want his end to come in a stinking, screaming cage trapped in a land of strangers.

But all he could smell was fire, and Nix knew he was out of time.


	6. Chapter Six

"Nix!" That was Winters, and the only thing Nix could think was that at least someone he knew would be there at the end. "Nix! Listen to me: you have to drop and roll."

Nix kept scrambling up, clinging to the top of the cage, but the smoke was thicker there, and the stench made it hard to breathe. Pain screamed through his back as the burning substance sizzled on his scales. If he'd been in his groundling form, it would have already scorched him down to the bone.

"Nix!" Winters was also starting to panic now. He was right outside the cage. Was he on fire too? Everything paused, and then Winters said in a voice made of steel, a voice like a queen: "Nix. On the ground. Now!"

Nix did what he was told: falling from the top of the cage to the stone floor, and when Winters told him to roll over, he did. Nix screamed as his burnt scales touched the dirty stone. He pressed his spines in and made himself as flat to the ground as he could. Whatever was in the explosions still burned at his flesh, but he thought the flames had gone out.

Rolling to his feet, Nix turned to Winters. He stood upright, still in his pressed green clothes, though now streaked with soot and singed at the cuffs. Fire licked across the ground, rising from pools of burning liquid, but Winters ignored them to focus on Nix inside the cage. He had a cloth pressed over his lower face to keep the smoke out of his mouth and nose, but tears filled his eyes, streaking clean lines across his sooty cheeks.

"This isn't my fault," Nix said, knowing how weak it would sound. The woman from the Golden Isles had said that Nix would summon an attack, and here one was.

But Winters’ eyes crinkled like he was smiling, and he said, "Yeah, I know."

Nix wasn't going to question that. Instead, he went to the door of the cell, facing Winters from a hand-span away. The bars were hot to the touch, but not enough to burn his scaled hands. "You have to let me out!"

For a moment the felt like a turn but couldn't be more than a heartbeat, Winters hesitated, and Nix thought that his orders would override his compassion, leaving Nix to die wounded and alone when he hadn't even done anything.

"Winters, please," Nix said.

Winters nodded sharply, and fished the small knife out of his pocket. He had the cell door open in a moment and started to run towards the keep without looking back to see if Nix was following him. The cloth fell away as he ran, and flames lit Winters' face. Nix could see the spike of pain from his injured leg, but he didn't slow down. Nix wanted to stop and let the animals go, but he understood that he couldn't bend to sentiment just then. They wouldn't be any safer running around the yards anyway, not with fire raining from the sky.

"Where are we going?" Nix asked as he fell into step behind Winters. He could leap into the air and get there faster, maybe even take Winters with him, but that didn't seem to be the plan.

" _You_ are going into the storerooms with the children," Winters said. "The other visitors are already there. You'll be safe. Probably. They don't usually kill children. "

The qualification didn't make Nix feel any better about the safety of the keep, but that wasn't his main problem with Winters' plan. It turned out he did care who won this fight. "I can help!" he said, as they left the menagerie for the court in front of the keep.

Winters was shaking his head. Another missile fell, and Winters threw himself back against Nix, as if his soft groundling skin could protect him from the flames. It was enough to knock them both back behind a low wall, Nix's back screaming as he fell on it, and then curled his wings around both of them. None of the burning liquid caught them.

Winters was lying sprawled across Nix's chest, breathing hard. When he lifted his head, Nix could see that his face was twisted in pain. "You"—he had to pause, swallow past the smoke, and start again—"You all right?"

"Yeah," Nix agreed, though he wasn't, and didn't see how he could be. When Winters struggled to get up Nix grabbed his shoulder and held him in place. His wings were still shrouding both of them. They didn't offer much protection, but the dark colour would make them next to invisible in the shadows.

"We've got to go," Winters insisted, but Nix held on.

"Listen, I can help!"

Again, Winters shook his head. "You ever been in a fight in your life?"

Nix had, but it had involved throwing teapots and sulking, not sharpened steel and explosions. He played to his strong points. "You have any other way to get up there?" he asked, pointing at the ship above them with his chin.

Winters started to protest, but then he stopped, staring down at Nix. "This isn't your fight."

"Maybe I just don't want to be locked in a store room with that woman from the Golden Isles," Nix said, not trying to argue. Winters was too smart to turn him down.

"Sure," Winters muttered, but he pushed himself to his feet, and this time Nix didn't try to stop him. "Come with me, we're going to need something."

Fires were roaring through the sheds alongside the keep, and a line of smoke-stained women had made a bucket chain from the well towards it. Winters ran past them, down a narrow stairway that Nix hadn't noticed and through an iron-bound wooden door. Nix waited outside, wondering if he should help with the water, though he didn't see how he could do much.

A moment later, Winters emerged with several bundles under his arms. He'd stripped out of his jacket and put on a breastplate of some kind of hardened leather, and a metal helmet, but was still wearing just his wool pants and boots. Nix had no idea how anyone could survive all this in a vulnerable groundling form, and didn't think light armour would do much to help, but Winters had been doing this for a long time.

"All right," Winters said, and his tone had changed, back to snapping orders like a queen who expected obedience. "I want you to get me on that ship. They're not going to be watching above them, so get as high as you can and drop me onto the deck from above. You'll only have a moment of clear time, so peel off as fast as you can. I've sent word to the archers on the roof, and they won't target you. Understand?"

Nix found himself nodding even before his mind caught up to what Winters had just said. "How, uh, how are you planning to get off of the ship?"

Winters patted a coil of rope tied to his belt.

"Yeah, that's a terrible plan," Nix told him. He could easily picture someone cutting the rope, or the ship rising, or any number of outcomes that left Winters plummeting to his death, high enough to kill him, but too low for Nix to have time to dive down and save him. "I'm going with you."

"You are, are you?" Winters sounded more amused than anything, and Nix wanted to do something to wipe the condescension off his face. Maybe he'd never been in a fight before, but he was in one now, and he couldn't possibly be bad at everything.

"We going, or not?"

"We're going." Winters held his arms out from his sides, and Nix stepped in, letting Winters wrap his arms around his chest, and holding onto him with one arm.

When Winters seemed to have a good hold, Nix crouched, coiling the power in his legs for a spring upwards into the night. Carrying the weight of a fully-grown groundling was harder than he'd remembered ferrying Arbora being, and it took him several heavy, awkward flaps of his wings to catch the air properly. It was the upwelling of heat from the fire that finally lifted them. From there, it was easy to circle up and up until he was skimming in the bottom layer of the low cloud. From there, he could see that Captain Dike's wind-ship was on fire, and that was spreading to the cranes along the castle wall. The first enemy ship had tied rope ladders off to the main wall, and the second was still drifting along the length of the castle's interior, dropping fire on everything below it, regardless of its value.

Nix craned his neck down to ask in Winters' ear: "Which one?"

Winters pointed to the drifting wind-ship, and Nix started to circle above it. Lit from below by the fires, the decks lay in shadow. Nix needed to find an angle of approach that wouldn't foul his wings in the masts. From about a hundred paces above, the groundlings aboard ship were dark smudges in the smoke, lit by flashes as they ignited their projectiles, and then cast into darkness again as the missiles dropped into the castle. A shield of thick hides sheltered the back of the ship from arrows fired by the defenders on the keep. The front of the ship was more open, but still had ropes running all over the place. Nix tilted his wing in order to make another circle. He didn't like the look of any of this. He'd always enjoyed flying, but the risks had never been higher than hunting for fun with Blanche and Hair. What if he messed this up and crashed them both into the deck, or somehow dropped Winters into the fires below? If he kept circling, eventually the archers on the ship were going to look up and notice him. Then he'd have to do all this while being shot at.

Growling to himself, Nix tucked in his wings and stooped towards the front of the ship, a little to the side, where there were fewer ropes. The side of the ship came up faster than he'd thought, and Nix almost overshot, snapping his wings open and frantically back flapping. His feet caught the railing, and he dumped Winters onto the deck before throwing himself sideways to avoid falling on top of him. The groundlings were mostly towards the back of the ship, but Nix could hear them yelling in alarm.

Winters had his blade drawn and was lunging forward even as his feet touched the deck. A groundling came up from inside the ship, and Winters slashed across his throat so fast Nix saw the blood spraying before the flash of the blade.

By then, a couple groundlings had gotten turned around and were drawing bows, arrows aimed at Nix. As Winters vanished into the interior of the ship, Nix dropped and scuttled across the deck behind him. He raised his spines in a protective shield around his neck and back, but that made his skin burn and reminded him of the flames that had stuck to his scales. The narrow passages inside the ship hadn't been designed for Aeriat. Nix thought about shifting to groundling, but he didn't want to lose the armour of his scales.

By the time he'd negotiated the steep stairway, jamming his wings through the ingress, Winters had gotten out of sight ahead of him. It was easy enough to follow the trail of bodies and sounds of struggle.

The passage led to a room in the centre of the ship, another dead body, and Winters bending over a carved box. "This is what makes the ship fly," he said before Nix could ask. He emptied the contents of one of the bags he'd tied to his belt. It looked like salt to Nix, but when Winters sparked a flint over it, it began to smoulder and smell sharp and rotten.

"All right, let's go," Winters said, and they started back up to the deck.

The attackers had put a covering over the opening, and when Nix threw his weight against it, it didn't budge. "Must be barred," he grumbled, rolling the shoulder he'd just jammed against the barrier.

"There's usually another hatch," Winters said, turning towards the back of the ship. There wasn't a hatch, but there were windows covered only with translucent hides. Nix tore at one of them with his claws while Winters hacked another. It didn't take long to make an opening. The back of the ship still faced the keep and its fire and archers, but no arrows found them.

Winters looked at Nix, face lit by the flames below. This would have been the part of the plan where he lowered himself down on a rope. "They'll be waiting for us," he said, and it took Nix a moment to catch on. This was the obvious route out of the wind-ship. The attackers would expect Nix to leap out and take wing, whereupon they would probably shoot him. That was fine. Nix didn't have to leap anywhere.

Flattening his spines, Nix turned his back to Winters and said. "Can you hold on like this?"

Winters could, but from his grunt of displeasure, it wasn't very comfortable. Nix knew that he wouldn't last long with the pain of rough leather of Winters' armour pressing against his burned back. It didn't need to be for long. With Winters clinging to his back, Nix dropped to his belly and scuttled out through the torn window coverings and down the side of the ship. His claws easily dug into the wood, holding him tightly to the side of the ship. He heard shouts behind him as he went—and really this plan would have worked better on the curved sides of a Toccoan wind-ship—but before an arrow could so much as chunk into the wood beside Nix's tail, he was clinging upside down to the bell of the ship, craning his neck to take in the fires below. They were almost at the southernmost wall of the castle, out of range of the keep's arrows, and with nothing below them but the steep face of the cliffs Currahee was built into.

Craning his head back around, Nix yelled, "Let go."

"What?" Winters demanded.

"Let go. I'll catch you." If he tried to fly with Winters clinging to his back, he'd foul his wings and dump him off anyway. Consorts might not be used to fighting, but every Aeriat knew how to catch a falling Arbora.

Winters hesitated, and Nix knew it was too much to have asked. That wasn't the kind of trust you put in a stranger. Nix was just going to have to shake Winters off, catch him, and apologise later.

The side of the wind-ship jerked violently to the side, as though a great hand had picked it out of the air and shaken it. Nix's claws strained to dig into the smooth wood, and he grunted in discomfort at Winters' tightening hold around his chest. The ship shook again, and started to pitch nose first towards the ground.

Winters yelled something, but Nix couldn't hear him, could only hear the pounding of blood in his ears as the realisation sank in that whatever was happening with the ship, he and Winters were going to die if they didn't do something in the next heartbeat.

"Winters!" Nix yelled, voice rising in panic.

"All right!" Winters replied. Then he let go and dropped away from the ship.

Nix let go of the belly of the ship, flipped his body so that his nose pointed towards the ground, tucked in his wings and dropped like a stone.

Winters knew how to fall. It must be part of his training jumping off of wind-ships. He kept his arms and legs spread wide to create wind resistance, and make it easier for Nix to grab him around the waist. It was just as easy as diving after an Arbora who'd fallen off a platform. Except the Arbora often screamed to make it easier to locate them, and Winters plummeted in grim silence.

It only took a few heartbeats to overtake Winters, and in the weightlessness of free fall, to turn him to face Nix so that they could hold on to each other. Winters clung tight to Nix's chest, burying his face against Nix's neck. Nix angled out to get clear of the castle walls, gliding on half extended wings before scooping the air and slowing their fall. The terraced steps of the cropland below the castle rushed under them, the shape of the land more sensed via wind currents than seen in the dark. Flames still rose from the keep, making the jagged edges of the outer wall stand out like black teeth. The wind-ship they'd escaped from also burned as it fell towards the valley floor, forward momentum continuing even as whatever held it in the air failed.

Nix flapped hard, picking up altitude and circling back towards the castle. The ache in his healing wing was getting hard to ignore, and Nix didn't think he had the strength to attack the other ship. It had been moored to the far side of the castle, and from this far down the slope, Nix couldn't see if it was still there.

He could, if he wanted, just keep flying. He could take Winters out of the fight and get them both to safety until the situation sorted itself out, one way or another. They'd already done as much to help as anyone could expect to. Or, Nix could drop Winters on the walls or on the roof of the keep and just continue flying. He would need rest soon, but not so soon that he couldn't put sufficient distance between himself and the fighting. There he could sleep in the canopy of one of the plain trees and worry about getting the rest of the way back to Gale Iron in the morning.

Winters wasn't saying anything, seeming to trust Nix's judgement as to their destination as he'd trusted Nix to catch him as he fell.

Nix moved close to the cliffs, catching the updraughts there and letting the wind lift him back up to the level of Currahee's outer walls. Grabbing the edge with his feet, he deposited Winters on the rampart before dropping down next to him.

As soon as Nix's feet found the solid stone of the castle's wall, the world crashed in on him. What had been a tolerable ache in his back and wing transformed into screaming pain, not overridden by the roar of the flames, and the yells and screams of the groundlings and trapped animals below. Metal clashed as the fighting continued along the walls, and the air was full of the smells of smoke and burning flesh. Nix didn't know how Winters had done this for turns on end. He hadn't even made it through one night.

Staggered, Nix leaned heavily against the low wall running along the rampart, and tried to catch his breath. He wanted to shift to groundling so that his duller senses could block out the worst of the carnage, but he knew that shifting would transfer the burns to the soft groundling skin of his back, and he didn't think he'd be able to manage the pain of that. He didn't know if he could manage the pain now.

"You all right?" Winters asked. He put his hand on Nix's shoulder, and for the first time Nix noticed how chilled Winters was. The shock and the night flying hadn't done him any good. Nix resisted the urge to wrap Winters in his wings to warm him, knowing that the night wasn't nearly over.

"I'll survive," Nix answered. He pushed off the wall, wavered, and spread his wings a little to keep his balance. Dizziness swept over him, and he was glad Winters was holding onto his shoulder, or else he'd have fainted at his feet like a consort in a ballad. Though, by that reckoning, Winters would be Nix's queen, who'd just fought a battle to win him. Maybe it wasn't so far off the truth. "What now?"

"Well," Winters said, and his hand was on the hilt of his blade. He wasn't just putting his free hand on Nix's shoulder to comfort him; Winters was leaning his weight on Nix. "I guess we see if I'm up to much when it comes to a fight."

Nix followed Winters' gaze and saw a dozen men making their way along the rampart towards them, having just come up a covered stairway. They wore the grey, night-blending colours of the attackers. They had blades of their own in their hands. Nix glanced behind him, but it was just fire that way, no backing off. Nix spread his wings, thinking to snatch Winters up, leap off the ramparts, and find a better place to land. He should have gotten them to the top of the keep in the first place.

As he did, the first two soldiers dropped to their knees, giving the three behind them room to draw their bows. They were close enough now that Nix didn't think they could miss him, no matter how fast he moved. He needed a certain amount of time to gain altitude. Maybe if he dove off the cliff he'd have a chance, but the slope was shallower here, and he'd have to spread his wings a bit to keep off it. If they hit him there, and he kept falling, he'd take Winters out with them. They were going to shoot Winters anyway. They already had arrows nocked.

"Use your rope to climb down," Nix said. He'd tried to put that queen's note of command in his voice, but he just sounded high and panicky, even in his Aeriat form.

"What?" Winters asked, but Nix was already stepping in front of him, bounding towards the intruders. He hissed and flared his spines up to make himself look bigger. He hoped that he looked like a darker shadow leaping out of the night. For once, Nix hoped that they really did think he was a Fell ruler about to eat their still beating hearts out of their chests.

The intruders don't give a hairsbreadth, Nix had a moment to see the bows drawing taut, and to consider that he'd definitely messed it up this time. He hoped that Winters would use his death to escape. At least all this wouldn't have been for nothing, then.

Nix was watching the attackers, the attackers were watching Nix, and no one but Winters noticed the flash of white and copper dropping from the sky.

Winters was still crying out behind Nix; Nix was still ignoring him, and then Blanche of Gale Iron Court dropped into the middle of the attackers, and they all started screaming too.

Since he'd been moving forward anyway, Nix kept going, but by the time he closed distance with the attackers, Blanche had swept half of them off the ramparts with her tail and was in the middle of sequentially tearing the other half's throats out with her teeth. Some managed to flee back down the staircase.

Nix took a step back, leaving her to it. A moment later, Hair and Grain landed on the rampart wall behind her, watching with interest. Tipping his head back, Nix saw another pair of warriors circling above, likely Water and Rain, making up the balance of his sister's usual warrior cronies.

"Friends of yours?" Winters asked. He stepped up even with Nix, and was attempting to sound casual, but the tension vibrating through his body gave him away. Winters smelled like blood and fear.

"My sister," Nix answered, watching as Blanche flipped the penultimate surviving attacker into the last, sending them both crashing to their deaths in a spray of blood.

"Huh," Winters replied. He rocked back on his heels like he wanted to take a step back, but didn't. Instead he sheathed his blade and waited.

Finally, Blanche looked up at Nix, seeming to notice he was there for the first time. "You're an idiot," she said with conviction. It was the first thing she'd said to him since the last time she'd visited him in Star Aster.

Nix didn't think he could legitimately argue with that, but legitimacy had never stopped him from trying anything. "Smart enough to get out of Gale Iron," Nix answered, though that didn't really make a whole lot of sense.

Blanche snorted. She stepped closer, and Hair hopped off the wall to fall into step behind her. Hair shifted to groundling losing over a head of height and grinned at Nix with his gapped teeth. Blanche stayed in her Aeriat form, tall with her mother's white scales lined with her father's copper. It should have made her look old, as Raksura tended to fade to lighter colours as they aged, but instead she seemed more like a creature from another world.

Nix felt a light pressure behind his eyes as her magic brushed over him, not forcing him to shift, but suggesting to him that he should. He stayed as he was, and Blanche scowled.

"You're hurt!" she snapped when she got close enough to smell his singed scales. She tried to walk around behind Nix to look at his back, but Winters was in the way. Blanche stopped, glaring at Winters like he didn't have the right to exist on his own castle walls. Taking him in with a glance, she looked away dismissively. "Who's this?" She asked Nix, still speaking Raksuran.

"A friend," Nix answered in Altanic.

"Of course," Blanche replied disdainfully. She really wasn't going to switch to a language Winters could speak. She leaned over and sniffed Winters' neck, before adding, "He doesn't smell like you."

"What's she saying?" Winters asked. He was standing perfectly still, looking sideways at the way the blood smeared across Blanche's scales looked black in the light of the flames.

"She's disappointed I haven't managed to have sex with you," Nix answered, and, to Blanche to change the topic: "I didn't think you'd find me here." What he wanted to say was that he hadn't expected that she'd have looked for him, but couldn't bring himself to admit that.

Hair answered first, leaning against the wall to look at the burning keep. "We looked for days and days, and then Grain saw something on fire, and we figured that was probably you."

"Did you..." Blanche started to ask, but she was still circling around him and saw Nix's back just then. It must have looked worse than it smelled, because she hissed in dismay. "Who did this?"

Nix flicked his spines to shoo her away, but that made his back hurt more. He really wanted to be lying down right now. He was glad Winters didn't understand Blanche's question, as he'd probably be looking guilty just then, and it wasn't a good time for it. "That would be the people dropping fire on the castle," Nix answered. "The ones that are on fire at the bottom of the valley right now."

"You do that?" Hair asked, sceptical.

"I helped," Nix told him, trying not to sound defensive. "Winters couldn't have done it without me."

Hearing his own name, even if he didn't get the language, snapped Winters out of the family drama surrounding him. He glanced between the Raksura standing around him and straightened, starting to limp along the wall towards the sound of fighting. "This night isn't over," he said. "Look after Nix."

Blanche grunted at the affront, but was too busy peering at the damage to Nix's back. "Of course you'd hurt yourself too badly to fly or shift. Why didn't you break a wing while you were at it?"

Nix knew that she was annoyed that she couldn't easily get him to safety, and that it didn't look good for a queen to not be able to look after her useless consort clutchmate, but the question still rankled. "I did that before I got here, and you know how I hate to be boring."

"You _what_?" Hair demanded. "We thought you ran away."

"I didn't!" Nix snapped, though he initially had.

"Diamond wouldn't let us start looking for days because she said you'd get hungry and come home on your own," Blanche added, sounding frustrated and angry about what must have been a serious fight with their mother. "In the end, I took my warriors and went anyway."

"But then we couldn't find you," Hair added. "What happened to you?"

Nix considered a way to sum up what had happened, but was pretty sure if he mentioned the cage thing that Blanche would tell her warriors to go fan the flames licking up the side of the keep. He watched Winters leaning more and more heavily on the wall as he went, obviously struggling to walk, but refusing to drop out of the fight. He still didn't know why Winters had believed Nix when he said he wasn't a Fell, but he desperately wanted to find out. He wanted Winters and Garcia and the nice women in the eating hall to survive this night.

"I hurt my wing and couldn't fly home, so they let me stay here," he said, finally. From the way Blanche's spines flared he knew he wasn't really selling the lie, but it would hold for now.

"Fine," Blanche said in a tone that very much implied that Nix would be hearing much, much more about this later, then to Hair she commanded, "Take Grain and the others and see if you can put out that fire."

"Sure," Hair blurred as he shifted back to his Aeriat form and leaped into the air with Grain right behind him. Grain hadn't said a word to Nix though the whole thing, and Nix didn't know if that meant she didn't like him, or she just sensibly wanted to avoid further pissing off an already aggravated Blanche. Either way, he could sympathise.

Across the castle, the second wind-ship, which had been dropping soldiers onto the walls, was pulling up its lines, and looking ready to depart. Nix thought about seeing if Blanche would be willing to take it down, but decided that he wouldn't ask any Raksura to take part in a fight that wasn't their own. The clash of metal was dying down, and Nix thought that Currahee might be liberated, or at least that the worst of the fighting was over.

Winters hadn't even needed to be in the fight after they'd taken down the first wind-ship. Nix could have flown away with him. Nix looked after him down the wall, but he'd vanished into a tower or down a stairway, and the air was too full of smoke for Nix to catch his scent.

Hair and the others had ripped a sheet of oiled canvas off something, and between the four of them were using it to convey water onto the fire. Blanche was fussily flicking bits of viscera off her scales, trying to hide that she was studying Nix. Dawn was beginning to lighten the eastern sky, and Nix could see outlines of Toccoan wind-ships making their way home. No matter what happened, the castle would be saved, now. Nix considered following the actions of many consorts in the histories, and passing out then and there.

The only downside Nix could see to that plan was that he wanted to know what was going to happen, and he didn't trust Blanche not to put him on the canvas tarp and make her warriors fly him all the way back to Gale Iron before he woke up.

Maybe it was because he was so tired and coming down from the rush of his first experience in combat, but Nix found himself saying honestly, "I wasn't sure if you'd bother looking for me."

Blanche turned her full attention on him again. "I thought you'd run away to make us prove that we would." That was Hope, their father, talking, and she at least looked a little abashed to be quoting him.

"I wouldn't have made a bet on that," Nix said. "I just wanted to fly a bit, then..." He swept his arm over the smouldering castle, as though it explained how he'd ended up so far from home.

"Of course." Blanche's voice was heavy with irony.

Nix considered what his reception back at Gale Iron would be like. It had been bad enough the last time when he'd just been the unwanted consort returned to his family in disgrace. Now, he would be coming back as the spoiled consort who'd run away to live with groundlings, playing at being a solitary to get attention, as if getting yelled at the moment Star Aster's warriors were out of earshot wasn't attention enough. "Maybe I could just stay here," he said morosely, even though he knew he wouldn't. The misunderstanding about the Fell had put an end to that fantasy.

"With your groundling _friend_?" Blanche asked, amused.

"I helped him save his castle," Nix protested. "He's probably grateful."

"Well," Blanche said, taking Nix's comment more seriously than it deserved, "We have to stay until you can fly, you can make the most of his gratitude, if you like."

"Sure," Nix muttered. He suspected that if Winters hadn't wanted to have sex with him two nights before, he never would, grateful or not, but at least Blanche wasn't going to insist on whisking him away before he could say goodbye. If nothing else, he was going to enjoy the look on the Golden Islander's face when she found out _who_ had saved the castle and her life.

His pathetic looks were better in groundling form, but Blanche must have picked up on something of his mood because she shifted to her Arbora form, her wings vanishing and her body softening and becoming smaller and rounder, her spines cascading into something nearer to hair. When the blur of her transformation passed, she put her hand on Nix's shoulder. "It won't be that bad," she said.

Nix snorted. "How?" It wouldn't be that bad for Blanche. She'd be up in the queens' bowers with only Diamond's whims to tolerate, and Diamond was more interested in her court actually functioning than in personal grudges. Hope, however, wouldn't be able to see past Nix's failures, and Nix would have little chance of escaping him again.

Blanche studied her claws, no less sharp in this form than in the Aeriat one. "She's taken another consort," she said. "She sent emissaries back to the mother court in the Reaches, and someone's coming out. He should be installed by the time we get back."

"That's..." Nix couldn't actually quite imagine what that was. For as long as he'd been alive, Hope had been first consort, with the queen's ear and the ability to cause as much trouble as he liked. "When did this happen."

Blanche shrugged, as though a major shake up in court politics was of little interest to her. "I suppose she sent a few warriors with a mentor to arrange it after she heard why you were coming home."

"Oh." Nix hadn't realised that his whole line was being removed from the court. He supposed that his position would fall a little with Hope's, but he couldn't imagine where one could go from absolute rock bottom. At least if Hope was plotting how to displace his supplanter, he wouldn't have too much time to make Nix's life miserable. If Nix was smarter than he'd ever shown to be, he'd try to get into the new first consort's good books and find some protection there. He'd probably just go with his original plan and move into the nurseries instead. Someone would be having fledgelings he could play with. "That will be a change," was all he could think to say.

Blanche looked at Nix sharply, as though he were missing something stupidly obvious, but then there was a great hiss of steam and a cry of dismay, and she shifted and took flight in the same moment, heading up to look after whatever her warriors were doing. Nix didn't even turn to look. It wasn't his problem.

None of this was Nix's problem. Nix, when he really considered it, didn't have any problems at all, at least not beyond the immediate one of exhaustion and the pain in his back, but healing sleep would fix those. After that, he'd be free of responsibilities, and of worries, free to do whatever he liked with the long days of the rest of his life. With his luck, he'd become a line grandfather and live for ten generations, only without any of the generations being his own descendants.

He thought of Winters, and how delighted he'd looked to see Nix fly the night before. Now that Nix thought of it, Winters was the first person who'd seemed happy to see Nix in as long as he could remember. Since before everything at Star Aster had gone to shit, anyway.

For lack of anywhere else to go, Nix walked along the rampart until he came to one of the little towers on the corners, and went up into it. There was a ladder to a small room, which had a fireplace, unlit, and a cot, and another ladder to the top of the tower. Nix figured this was as good a place as any to rest, flopped onto his stomach, closed his eyes, and dropped into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

Nix didn't wake up until early afternoon, and when he did, the room had grown quite warm and pleasant to lie in. The bed was just another one of those frames topped with a sleeping mat full of straw, but in Nix's lethargy, it felt infinitely soft.

It thus took him a few moments to realise what had woken him up. He could hear shifting on the roof of the tower, the scrape of scales on stone and figured the warriors must be sunning themselves up there. He cracked an eye to look around the room and saw Winters sitting on the edge of the hatchway to the lower level, his bad leg stretched out in front of him, while the other rested on a ladder rung. He looked like he hadn't slept, and smelled like he'd rolled in the ashes of a burning stable. The stench alone was probably what had woken Nix up. It went with the soot smeared all over Winters' face and clotting his hair.

"Hey," Nix said blearily. He wasn't sure what Winters wanted; to say goodbye probably.

Winters started on hearing his voice, looking up sharply. He had, it seemed, been lost in his own little world. "Hey," he answered, and smiled at Nix like he meant it. Nix was going to miss that smile.

"You all right?" Nix asked. He should probably sit up and stretch and work out how badly everything hurt, but it didn't hurt right now and that was what mattered.

Winters shrugged one shoulder. "I'll live."

"Glad to hear it," Nix considered asking if he wanted to snuggle down in the nice warm bed for a bit, but decided it wouldn't get him any further than it had the last few times. "How bad is it out there?"

Winters' mouth twisted in disgust, and he looked like he might vomit. "It's bad. The good news is that the fires are out, and it never got going inside the keep, so the children are okay. We lost..." Winters rubbed his hand over his mouth, and Nix could see that the skin on the back of his hand was burned. "We lost a lot of people. If Speirs hadn't showed up when he did, we might all be prisoners right now. That was why they attacked," he added almost as an afterthought, "to take General Taylor hostage, try to negotiate better terms."

Nix suspected that he was more likely to have been lunch than a prisoner, but Blanche would have saved him either way. "So is your war over?"

"Maybe," Winters said, not sounding any more hopeful than he had any other time he talked about the end of the fighting. "Those were their last two wind-ships, and we think most of their able fighting men. We've thought they'd be ready to surrender before, and..."

He looked too exhausted to finish the sentence, and Nix blurted, "Why aren't you in bed?"

Winters grinned crookedly. "You mean yours?" But before Nix could protest that for once he was innocent of lascivious intent, continued. "I'm heading there next. I wanted to say goodbye."

"Oh." Now Nix pushed himself to a crouch, stretching his wings up. His back still hurt but he could probably fly, at least if they took things slow. "I guess Blanche isn't in a mood to stick around."

"No, I guess not," Winters said, and he hesitated, leaning back so that his weight was resting on braced arms. "She had it out with General Taylor after she found out about, well, your story." He tipped his head to one side, and Nix could just imagine Blanche's reaction to discovering that a consort of Gale Iron and her brother besides had been shot and then locked in a cage, twice, and almost executed as a Fell infiltrator.

"How'd she find that out?" Nix asked, not sure if he was sorry or glad he'd missed the show. On the whole, he decided that he was over queens fighting over him, no matter how glad he was to find out that his family had come to look for him after all.

Winters shrugged one shoulder, the movement jolting his body to one side. "I told her."

"I always knew you were stupidly brave," Nix commented, and couldn't help adding, "Pretty too."

If Nix's compliment made Winters' face change colour, it didn't show under the layers of soot. He smiled ironically at Nix. "That's how I knew," he said, and when Nix didn't ask what he'd known, he added. "Lonir Kal, from the Golden Isles, she said that you could make people do what you wanted. But you let us keep you locked up, even after I found out you were a person, and when you wanted me... uh, well, I guess what I mean is that you just flirted and tried to bite me, and when I said no, you didn't..."

"A Fell ruler would have raped you," Nix said flatly, "and made you think you wanted it."

Winters looked away, but nodded slightly.

Nix didn't know what to say. He was glad that Winters had decided that Nix was telling the truth, but the accusations the Golden Islander had made still made his skin crawl just to think of them. He mostly felt relief that Blanche was taking him home soon. He didn't think he'd be able to look at General Taylor or this Lonir Kal. No matter how bad things were with his father, they couldn't be worse than the reminders of helplessness and humiliation that hung over the castle like smoke. Nix flopped back onto his stomach, noticing for the first time that he'd ruined the bedding with soot rubbed off his scales.

"I did want it," Winters said, making Nix look up sharply. "Not that quickly, but eventually, I would have liked..."

It was hard to miss the way he was talking in past tense. "Yeah, me too," Nix said. He considered for a moment, then shifted into his groundling form. It made the pain in his back sharper. The soot and grime transferred from his scales to his clothes, and the stench of the burned out castle faded as his senses dulled.

Winters watched him with mouth agape, even though he'd seen it before, and had seen the others shift as well.

Nix rubbed his hands over his face and through his hair. He needed a bath, a nice hot soaking one in Gale Iron's natural hot springs. "I didn't want to lie to you," Nix said, and it sounded more sincere in the softer timbres of his groundling voice.

"You weren't the one who did anything wrong," Winters said, which Nix supposed was right, but struck him so oddly that he laughed.

"That makes a first." He rolled over so he could sit on the edge of the bed, facing Winters. He braced his elbows on his knees and put his chin on his hands and stared for a moment. Winters was not just pretty but beautiful, in a lanky groundling kind of way, and the layers of grime and exhaustion obscuring his face didn't make Nix think that was any less true. Nix himself was just as dirty, and they'd gotten that way together, doing something important to save lives. That was how living in a Raksuran court should feel: everyone fitting into a role, and all working together for the betterment of everyone. It was exactly how Nix hadn't felt in a court since the very early days at Star Aster, before he'd blown all that. "I'm going to miss you," he said.

Winters smiled thinly, as though he assumed Nix was still joking. "You don't even know me."

"Sure I do." Or, at least, Nix knew enough to know that he wanted to know more.

Something in his expression made Winters take him seriously, because he simply nodded and said, "I'll miss you too, big guy."

After that, silence stretched out between them, and Nix didn't know what to say next. It seemed like "Goodbye" was the logical choice—it was what Winters had come to say—but he couldn't bring him to end this last conversation. There had to be something else after this.

Instead of speaking, Nix dropped to his knees in front of the cot. The hatchway lay between them, so Nix shuffled around it until he was kneeling next to Winters' hip.

"What are you doing?" Winters asked.

By way of answer, Nix reached out and stroked his hand over Winters' filthy hair, smoothing it flat. It was coarser than Nix's but still soft. The bright copper colour hardly showed through the dirt, and Nix wished he could see it again. He wished he had another chance to get this right. Winters hadn't liked the biting last time, so Nix just dropped his head to rest his brow against Winters' temple.

Winters sighed slightly and caught hold of Nix's shirt just at the hip, then tipped his head sideways so that their mouths touched. His lips moved against Nix's in a way that felt strange but not unpleasant, so long as Nix kept his sharp teeth clear. Nix felt little shivers run over his skin at the intimacy of the contact. This was, he guessed, what Winters had wanted him to do the other night when he'd stood with his lips parted.

When Nix didn't move in response Winters pulled away a little, studying his face. "Is that all right?"

"Yeah," Nix said, surprising himself with the answer. "Yeah, it's just fine. You can do it again, if you want."

"Fine?" Winters asked, sounding a little offended, but he turned to face Nix so that this time his nose didn't dig into Nix's cheek, and started rubbing his lips against the corner of Nix's mouth. From this close, Nix could see the hair growing in on Winters' cheek. He must have always cut it off before Nix saw him. It was the same sparkling colour as the hair on his head, but scratchier, a little like a bite. Nix liked the contrast with the softness of Winters' lips. When they were touching lips to lips again, Nix found out that Winters' mouth didn't taste very good, but Nix couldn't bring himself to mind. It felt so good to have someone's hands on him moving with kindness rather than efficiency or brutality. Nix found that he was whimpering with pleasure, and he could feel Winters' mouth curve into a smile as they kept touching each other.

Whoever was sunning themselves on the tower roof rolled over, and Nix pulled away. The last thing he wanted was one of the warriors, or worse still Blanche herself, walking in on him about to have sex with a groundling.

Winters licked his lips, which didn't help with Nix's self restraint, and his eyes had gone dark again, but Nix reminded himself that this was them saying goodbye. Some time that day, or the next at the latest, Nix would fly out of Currahee and never go back, never see Winters again.

Unless, that was...

"Was General Taylor serious about wanting to trade with us?" Nix asked.

Winters blinked and shook his head slightly. "What? Well, I guess he was before what your sister threatened to do to him."

Nix could only imagine. "I can smooth all that out," he said airily. He could, in fact, probably sell the whole experience as somehow improving. If he could talk to Diamond before Blanche did, she might just send Taylor a gift of thanks. The real problem was going to be whether or not Winters would be interested. "I thought maybe I could work it out so I came back with a trading party. From time to time."

"You did, huh?" Winters' expression had turned from quizzical to pleased, and sitting right next to each other, Nix could see the pink in his cheeks even under the soot.

"Is that, uh, is that something you'd be interested in?" Nix asked, throwing himself into the breach, like dropping off the belly of the wind-ship the night before.

"Yeah," Winters agreed, "yeah, it would." He leaned in again, and having caught on Nix parted his lips like they were going to rub their mouths together, but instead of doing that, Winters buried his face in Nix's filthy shirt and held on tight.

Not knowing what else to do, Nix wrapped his arms around Winters' shoulders and hugged him back. They sat together like that for a long time, long enough that Nix felt ready to nearly fall back to sleep, safe and warm in another's embrace.

It ended when Blanche dropped down from the upper level, hanging upside down by her tail like an uncouth fledgling, and smirked at them.

Nix sighed. "I guess this _is_ goodbye," he said.

Winters nodded, his head rocking against Nix's shirt, but he didn't move or let go. He must be nearly too tired to move, and all Nix wanted to do was curl up with him and sleep.

"It's time to go," Blanche said, voice gentler than Nix expected. "We'll be slow with you injured, and the warriors. Diamond's probably about to eat her own tail as it is."

Nix thought about pretending to be more injured than he was, or rightfully claiming that he needed more rest, and asking Blanche to send one of the warriors back with a message, but that would just make the inevitable more difficult. "Fine, fine," he said and started to wriggle out of Winters' hold on him. On a whim, he shifted back to Aeriat and lifted Winters from his perch on the edge of the hatchway.

Instead of protesting, Winters chuckled and put his arms around Nix's neck, holding on even after Nix laid Winters onto the cot. Leaning in, Nix nipped the lobe of Winters' ear, making him squawk, but he didn't pull away this time. He looked up at Nix with his pale eyes and the same kind of trust he must have felt when he let himself fall from the wind-ship into nothing.

Nix's throat felt tight, and he knew that if he didn't get out of there, he was going to start to cry. "Take care of that leg, Winters," he said, and, "Get some rest."

Winters pushed himself up on his elbow and reached out, but Nix was already turning himself. "Stay safe," he said.

Neither of them said goodbye.

Nix scrambled up the ladder to the top of the tower, ignoring the stares of Hair and the other warriors, and launched himself into the grey afternoon sky. The sun broke through the clouds, just then, warming his back as they started for home.


	7. Epilogue

Patches of snow still clung to the heights of Fortress Currahee, but the savannah to the north-west had melted to a brown stubble by the time Nix returned. Led by Blanche and a dozen warriors carrying a handful of Arbora, this was to be the first formal trading expedition since negotiations had concluded. Nix was tagging along, more or less with Diamond's permission, certainly with Diamond's express desire that he get out of the court and therefore her frills.

The keep had still had dark scorch marks up the side, but the wooden cranes along the walls had been repaired, and half a dozen wind-ships were either moored to them or drifting above. The terraced slopes below hadn't been planted yet, save for a few places, but Nix saw groundlings all over the land, walking from place to place, with tools over their shoulders, doing whatever groundlings got up to when they weren't fighting wars.

Blanche cupped her wings to slow her flight and lifted her spines, signalling the others to start to drop towards the roof of the keep. Nix had been riding in her wake, but instead of following, slanted away to the right and dropped into the valley below. Blanche's would have sensed his departure with a queen's mind magic, but she showed no sign of noticing. Hair, however, tucked his wings into his sides and rolled so that he swooped by Nix. He said something Nix didn't quite catch but which sounded lewd. Nix whipped his tail up at Hair, missing by ten paces.

Turning back to more important considerations, Nix studied the ground beneath him, trying to follow his memory of Winters' map. Somewhere down below, there would be a creek that ran into a pond too small to call a lake, and below that, he'd find a house of stone, and inside Winters and his family. Without a written language in common, Winters had needed to keep the details of what else Nix might find fairly sparse, but Nix had to assume that one thing he would find would include welcome. Winters had written, after all, and Nix had come. After that, they'd have to see.

Nix found the creek, and the house, but decided to land beside the still waters of the pond. There was a south-facing rock slope next to it, and Nix wanted to rest and catch some sun. Winters would find him soon enough. Even this early in the year, the yellow sandstone that made up the escarpment felt warm under Nix's spread wings. He stayed in his Aeriat form and stretched to his full length on top of them. Nix thought he would nap, but instead he drifted peacefully, enjoying the rest and quiet of the place, so different from the last time he'd been there, not quite half a turn ago.

Instead of fire and clashing steel, Nix enjoyed sun and birds singing, and the murmur of the creek.

It was a good place, Nix thought sleepily, or at least one where a Raksura might be left alone to catch up with his groundling maybe lover.

He smelled Winters coming before he saw him, the breeze carrying scents of dirt and perspiration. Suddenly, Nix felt as though he were in that training yard, holding Winters in his arms as they laughed together. He lifted his head and watched the small trees growing at the edge of the pond, waiting until Winters pushed through to the clearing before he shifted to groundling. Winters watched with astonishment, then smirked at his own reaction, as if he were pleased that Nix could still impress him.

Unlike last time, Nix was dressed for travel, his tunic still the time-consuming dark-dyed blue silk, but not worked over or bejewelled. He wore only a sapphire-set armband for jewellery, and no collar or rings. Winters, for his part, was mostly wearing mud. Nix couldn't even tell what colour his work clothes were under all that grime, but if they'd been anything other than mud-coloured before, they weren't any more.

Smile widening, Winters dove into the pond fully clothed, including his boots. The pond was fed by snowmelt off the escapement, but that didn't seem to slow Winters down as he splashed and paddled across to Nix's side of the water. He dove at the centre of the pond, his dun-coloured clothes blending with the mud he'd kicked up until he vanished from sight. Nix thought briefly about shifting back to Aeriat so the cold wasn't as bad, and diving into the water himself, but it was warm and restful on the rocks, and he stayed where he was. Winters broke the surface a moment later, and walked out of the pond, water streaming off his hair and clothes. His boots sloshed as he walked over to the rock face, and Nix retreated up slope a little so he wouldn't be dripped on.

"Hey," Winters said, and slicked his hair out of his face with a broad gesture. It had grown longer since Nix had last seen him. "I saw you landing."

"Hey," Nix answered, then realised that for all the months he'd spent thinking of coming back, he hadn't actually worked out what he was going to say. His fantasies tended to involve Winters in a greater state of undress, and usually not as interested in talking as he seemed to be now. "Blanche's at the keep," he said, though Winters would have seen that too. "Thought I'd drop by. I got your letter."

Winters nodded. The edge of a smile pulled up his lips, and then he grinned out right. "It's good to see you," he said, and plonked down on the rocks next to Nix. "I wasn't sure if you'd come back."

"Of course I came back," Nix answered, as if arranging any of this hadn't taken half the winter. He looked down at the trickle of water running from Winters' sleeve over the surface of the rocks towards Nix's pants, and edged up the slope a little. "Raksura are susceptible to lung infections," he said, though mostly he thought the pond water looked cold and unpleasant. Winters smelled of mud and water weeds, overwhelming the musky, sweaty scent Nix remembered liking.

"Sure you are," Winters said, but he didn't try to move in. Instead, he grabbed the edge of his shirt and peeled it off over his head. Without looking at Nix to determine his reaction, he spread the shirt over the rocks below him, carefully smoothing out the folds so that it would dry more quickly.

Nix for his part took the time to run his eyes over the curve of Winters' naked back. He'd put on a little weight since he'd stopped soldiering. Nix remembered being able to feel the cut of his ribs, but now soft flesh thickened his waist a little, even as the muscles of his back and shoulder had gotten heavier and stronger from farm labour. "You're looking good," Nix commented.

For once he hadn't meant it like that, but Winters snorted and bent to pull off his boots. He dumped water out of each and set them upside down to drain before starting to unfasten the front of his trousers.

"I like where this is heading." Nix didn't hide how he ran his eyes over Winters' body. Winters flashed Nix a grin over his shoulder and sat back down in just a brief pair of underclothes. For a groundling, he had very nice legs, though the red hair sprinkled up then looked strange to Nix. He wondered what it would feel like when he ran his hands over it.

Winters flopped backward onto the smooth rock slope and folded his arms under his head, soaking up the sun like a Raksura. He closed his eyes and sighed, and for a moment they both just lay there, listening to the chatter of the birds in the trees. A small orange fish leapt out of the pond, and Nix considered that he could eat soon. He'd gotten a little better at hunting over the winter, and had idle fantasies of taking Winters up flying and then slaughtering a grasseater as big as he was and feeding both of them. Though Winters likely wanted his meat cooked, and might well be appalled by the whole affair.

Nix rolled on his side and propped his head up on his arm so he could watch Winters sprawl in front of him. It didn't seem like either of them was ready to talk, no matter that they'd spent a season apart unable to do just that. Nix didn't even really know where to start. It seemed like he and Winters had that in common. Maybe all they had in common.

Sensing Nix watching, Winters opened his eyes and squinted up at him. "How long are you here?" he asked, finally.

"Blanche said she wanted to stay a few days," Nix answered evasively.

Winters shook his head and frowned slightly. "That's not what I asked, Nix."

"Well how should I know?" Nix demanded. "I haven't talked to you yet."

Winters pushed himself up on his elbows. He had that red orange hair all over his chest, too, and it glistened in the sunlight, beads of water trickling down his chest as he half sat. Nix wanted to run his tongue through the hair, joining the beads of water into a rivulet. He wanted to feel if Winters' heart would beat faster when Nix touched him.

"We're talking now," Winters said. He was guarded again, and Nix wished he could reach back across the seasons to when Winters had touched him with his lips in the watchtower at Currahee.

Nix gave up. "How long would you like me to stay?" he asked plainly.

"Uh..." Winters blinked, caught out by Nix's abrupt end to their little game. He looked at Nix steadily for a long moment, seeming to gauge his chances, and then asked, "If I wanted you to live here, would you?"

"No," Nix answered before tact caught up with him. This was how he always seemed to get in trouble when it came to the politics of courts. "I'm Raksura; we don't... we don't live outside of our courts, not unless we're exiled, and that's..." he couldn't even finish. Being a solitary was a kind of death.

Winters frowned, clearly not happy with such an abrupt denial. "I thought you said you didn't have a place back at your... uh, your court? That you were fighting with your family."

Nix flicked at a loose bit of stone with his nail and considered how he might answer that. "It's been different than I thought it would be," he said, and when that didn't seem to bring any understanding to Winters' expression, added, "My mother's taken a new consort, Eclipse of Emerald Twilight. My father's still her consort, still first consort of the court, I suppose, but she doesn't listen to him as much any more. He's mostly been fighting with Eclipse, anyway, and everyone's been ignoring me, so I just do what I like." Which had, so far, mostly been following along with Blanche and Hair, visiting the nurseries, and pestering one of the mentors to teach him Altanic's written form. It was starting to get a little dull, if Nix were honest with himself.

"Oh." Winters turned to look at the pond, or maybe it was through the trees surrounding it to the farmland beyond. Nix could almost hear him thinking about all the work the land needed, and how different their lives were, and wondering what possible future any of this could have.

"But I could stay longer than three days, and I could come back more often. If you wanted," Nix said, trying to nudge Winters away from thinking about everything that wouldn't work. "I'd like to take you flying again; we didn't get much chance before."

"You dropped me," Winters commented, but the pensive look had faded.

Nix shook his head, and moved a hairsbreadth closer. "No I didn't; you jumped, and I caught you."

Winters leaned a little towards Nix, until his shoulder almost brushed the cuff of Nix's pants. "We made a pretty good team that night," he admitted, and he looked up at Nix through his lashes. "Fell apart a bit towards the end, though."

"It was fine. My sister saved us." Nix felt no shame in having needed it. Winters still didn't seem to understand that Raksuran consorts were the last adults in the court to be expected to see combat. Nix wondered if he'd ever work it out. "I was thinking more about after," he added. Another nudge closer, and Nix's bare foot touched Winters' upper arm. "Or maybe it was before, in the training yard."

"When you bit me?" Winters asked, but Nix knew that look of a held-back smile, the way it crinkled his eyes and made his jaw tense as he bit back a grin.

"When I said I wanted to have sex with you, and you made me sleep alone," Nix corrected, running his toes up and down Winters' bicep. The little hairs did indeed feel strange, tickling the back of Nix's foot. Winters leaned into his touch. His skin was still clammy from the pond, but Nix figured he could do something about that. He wondered if Winters would object to getting through at least the preliminaries out in the open, or if he wanted to go back to the little house he shared with his parents and sister.

"How heartless of me." Winters bent his neck to rest his head on Nix's knee, and Nix took the encouragement to finally pet Winters' hair. It was soaking wet, but the strands still slid through Nix's fingers as smoothly as he'd imagined. Winters hummed in appreciation and closed his eyes again. "That feels nice," he murmured.

Nix scratched his nails along Winters' scalp and down the back of his neck, feeling a pleased glow in his chest as Winters' head fell back and his lips parted in a silent moan of pleasure. This wasn't so different from foreplay with another Raksura. Nix might even try the lip touching thing again, though he always had to be so careful with his teeth. "It's all right," he said, "I'll show you what you've been missing."

"Mmm," Dick agreed. He stroked Nix's ankle with a work-roughened hand, pushing the hem of his pantleg up so that he could massage the muscles there. "And is that all you want to do?"

Nix's hand froze as it stroked down Winters' neck. "What do you mean?" he asked. Was Winters requesting some specific sex act? If so, he'd better describe it beforehand, because if Nix had to work it out by intuition, he didn't think it was going to go well.

Winters' hand stayed on Nix's ankle, but he too stopped moving and twisted to look Nix fully in the face. "Well, you want to have sex with me, and you want to take me flying; what else do you want?"

Stopping himself before he could ask what else there could be besides sex and flying, Nix considered the question. He thought about what had drawn him to Winters even when he was still locked in that damn cage pretending he couldn't speak, about Winters' kindness and strength and bravery, about how lonely he'd been, and how Nix had wanted to comfort him, even then. "I wouldn't mind being your friend," he said, at last.

Winters nodded slightly, a confirmation to himself as much as anything else. "Yeah," he said, smiling openly now and leaning back into Nix's touch. "Yeah, I'd like that."

Nix slithered down the rock until he was beside Winters and carefully put an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in close. "I can't stay here all the time," he said, "And I don't think I'm going to be much use on your farm, but I'm extremely decorative, and very good in bed."

"Sure," Winters agreed, "sounds like big talk, to me." He leaned in to nip Nix lightly behind the ear.

"Now you're getting the idea," Nix told him. He carefully puckered his lips and pressed them to the side of Winters' head. When he flicked his tongue out, he tasted mostly river water, but there was a hint of Winters' sweat underneath that. "How about I show you a few other things?"

Winters' didn't resist as Nix guided him back so that they were lying side by side on the sun-warmed stone, nor as Nix gave into his earlier instinct and investigated what those little copper hairs felt like under his fingertips and tongue. Winters' skin had been pale from the cold water, but started to flush pink under Nix's touch. Nix watched with fascination, eyes constantly flicking up to Winters' to make sure he wasn't doing anything wrong.

If Winters were his queen, Nix would expect him to take the lead, but he didn't seem to mind Nix being the guide this time. Certainly, the way Winters was rubbing his hands all over Nix's arms and up his back under this tunic felt encouraging.

Nix was just reaching for the edge of Winters' underthings, curious if what was inside them matched anything he'd seen before, when Winters' caught his wrist. Nix froze, and lifted his head so that he could look Winters in the eye.

"Do you still want to wait?" Nix asked, trying not to let the disappointment show on his face. This was so on track with how he'd fantasised about this meeting going that he'd forgotten how cautious the Toccoans could be when it came to sex.

"No." Winters said, sounding like he was trying to convince himself. "I just... Nix, I want you to know that this means something to me. It won't just be—" He seemed to struggle to find the words. "It would mean we're special to each other. Do you understand?"

Nix'd had sex with more people than he'd bothered to keep track of, and they'd all been special to him in the moment of union, but he suspected that wasn't what Winters meant. He thought it was probably more like a consort and a queen, and how once claimed, a consort wouldn't be with any other queen unless the first one rejected him. "You mean you don't want me to have sex with any other Toccoans?" Nix asked, only half jokingly. "That might be a problem, because I'm pretty sure that General Taylor—"

Winters planted both hands on Nix's chest and shoved him onto his back hard enough to knock the breath out of him. "I'm serious, Nix."

Nix looked up at Winters, who was now straddling his waist, and dripping onto Nix's tunic. If the show of temper was meant to cool things down, it hadn't worked on Nix, nor was looking up at Winters backlit by the sun, skin gleaming and hair seemingly on fire. Never mind "for a groundling;" he really was quite stunning.

"I'm serious too," Nix said. "I might not sound like it half the time, but I am."

Winters nodded slowly, but Nix could tell he needed more.

"Besides, no other queen but you will take me," Nix told him, absolutely seriously, but for some reason that made Winters laugh so hard his head fell forward against Nix's chest, his half-dry hair falling into Nix's face. Nix took a moment to sniff it.

"All right, good enough," Winters said when he'd caught his breath again. "Though some day you're going to have to tell me what that means."

"Sure," Nix promised. He stroked Dick's hair and leaned down to nibble the lobe of his ear. "I'll add it to the list."

Winters melted against him then, and Nix got back to trying to get his underthings off.

It seemed to him that the list of things they had to tell each other was only going to get longer, and he couldn't say he minded one bit.

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to everyone who supported me on this voyage! Love every one of you 💖


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